There isn't anything to watch

in the evenings that reminds me

of my life, of the monotony of it,

its peaks and eddies, the photos

on the refrigerator of people I no

longer know, the trips I anticipated

to Prague and Cambodia and Mexico,

now over, those places as unreal

as fifth grade, the dancing in

the streets as still as the deer stuck

in the headlights on the midnight

drive back home. Nothing I see rescues

me from my experience, or improves

upon it; so I don't know what I'm asking

for, maybe nothing; maybe this too

is like each day, starting and ending and

middling but somehow missing something

en route, something bare and real,

like a phone call from that lost friend

or the feeling of waking up from

an absorbing, but unpleasant, dream.

Anna Ziegler's poetry and prose have been published (or are forthcoming) in Best American Poetry 2003, The Threepenny Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Arts and Letters, The Saint Ann's Review, Mid-American Review, The Cimarron Review, Reactions (UK) and many other journals. She graduated from Yale in 2001 and then received a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.