National Poetry Month: [ANNA] by Julie Carr

Finds a bird’s nest in a pile of leaves. Tightly wound scraps of the news.

Carries it into the house and sets it on the table.

After a while, she goes back out to play. The game she’s playing is called

“Anna.” It’s a game in which she pretends to be a girl named “Anna,” a girl

not very different from herself, but enough different: “a sort of solidarity

of liquids.”

Jumping from the rocks, conquering frequently, she mutters under her

breath. The darkness falls early; solstice is near. “Was nature a box—a

top object?”

When she comes in, she leaves “Anna” in the yard. In the nest a bit of

eggshell, translucent blue.

Holding the shell to the light, she extends the notion of “strange stranger”

to include all objects.

Shell in the air, walks into her room. The blue of the shell is exactly the

blue painted on her walls. And now she notices a chip missing from the

wall beside her bed.

Presses the shell against the wall. Instantly, it is absorbed.

And then in the window, the face of a girl.

This poem is from issue 39.1. You may purchase a copy here.