Centos by E. Kristin Anderson
Mother. I’m frightened.
She couldn’t quite follow it--
the sky purple overhead
sure of the ground and
plunging to the asphalt.
No matter what she did
smoke came out
pressed white-hot against
devil’s music
When she tried to say
it hurts mother
she lay on her back
and the moon snagged
from the warm, verdant earth.
That awful lightheaded feeling
some lovely vision--
on and on it rang
and all points of reference
made an island in the dark.
An emergency
slipped out of her fingers
slammed the door and
clamped tight.
Source: Rice, Anne. "Chapter 18." Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 336-341.
Beneath the wing
Idle under the darkling sky
my curses had no syllables--
I almost lost consciousness.
Mine was the naïveté of the living,
but this isolation had already begun
in sharp little waves.
And the sky itself drugged me
letting in a flood of ugly daylight
for the future.
My own hands outstretched against
that awful woozy feeling
each step an ordeal
I dream of the witch who will see me
in the hospital, resting,
a luscious flower.
We are on our own in this,
mad for the modern world
for its lace and trinkets and trash.
I lay awake the whole night.
I was sick,
naked and undefended.
I remembered everything
Source: Rice, Anne. "Chapter 20." Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 348-402.
Afraid of that
There was a little blaze of
emergency this morning.
She was sure that
the little television set
failed her.
She was no longer practicing
programmed fragility,
had not slept all night,
was too hungry just now
in the shape of a great burden.
There has been an emergency.
She had even
had the key in hand,
had a terrible headache--
something unwholesome
swarming.
And the air stood motionless--
a carefully painted picture
of her own blood,
just different,
beyond the glass doors.
Source: Rice, Anne. "Chapter 8." Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 131–138.
She couldn’t quite follow it--
the sky purple overhead
sure of the ground and
plunging to the asphalt.
No matter what she did
smoke came out
pressed white-hot against
devil’s music
When she tried to say
it hurts mother
she lay on her back
and the moon snagged
from the warm, verdant earth.
That awful lightheaded feeling
some lovely vision--
on and on it rang
and all points of reference
made an island in the dark.
An emergency
slipped out of her fingers
slammed the door and
clamped tight.
Source: Rice, Anne. "Chapter 18." Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 336-341.
Beneath the wing
Idle under the darkling sky
my curses had no syllables--
I almost lost consciousness.
Mine was the naïveté of the living,
but this isolation had already begun
in sharp little waves.
And the sky itself drugged me
letting in a flood of ugly daylight
for the future.
My own hands outstretched against
that awful woozy feeling
each step an ordeal
I dream of the witch who will see me
in the hospital, resting,
a luscious flower.
We are on our own in this,
mad for the modern world
for its lace and trinkets and trash.
I lay awake the whole night.
I was sick,
naked and undefended.
I remembered everything
Source: Rice, Anne. "Chapter 20." Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 348-402.
Afraid of that
There was a little blaze of
emergency this morning.
She was sure that
the little television set
failed her.
She was no longer practicing
programmed fragility,
had not slept all night,
was too hungry just now
in the shape of a great burden.
There has been an emergency.
She had even
had the key in hand,
had a terrible headache--
something unwholesome
swarming.
And the air stood motionless--
a carefully painted picture
of her own blood,
just different,
beyond the glass doors.
Source: Rice, Anne. "Chapter 8." Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 131–138.
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E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College graduate with a B.A. in classics, Kristin has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and Hysteria: Writing the female body (Sable Books, forthcoming). Her writing has been published worldwide in magazines and anthologies and she is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press), and 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press). Kristin is an editor at Red Paint Hill and was formerly a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. She now works during daylight as a freelance editor and writing coach. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.
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