Ann Weil ~ Five Poems

 

Blood of the Banana

For Troy, Brian, Alexandria, Arielle, Guadalupe, John, Nate and X

The flower pod hung
low and heavy,
a gor­geous appendage
dangling
two feet below
the bunch.

If left to nature,
it would ooze
its latex, clear at first,
then crim­son ink, impossible
to erase.
There was no need

for the shooter
to do what he did.

~

Afternoon Walk, Bone Island

And there were blushed mangoes
ripe on the branches
when the egg fell from the sky,
and as it hit the pave­ment it cracked
from perfection
to some­thing even more beautiful,
a hon­eyed sun
pil­lowed among bil­lowy clouds.
It was there I saw myself, final­ly opened—
a blood egg, yes,
but still recognizable.

~

Break-up

I hoped for a bone,
would have set­tled for ambiguity.
Never dared the defin­i­tive dream
in either direc­tion. But here
it is— my devastation.
Her back turned, Hope walks away.

~

Jane Doe, Bottom of the Ninth

Where did you lose it? A ridicu­lous ques­tion most of the time— but not always. Today, I lost, or rather, left, my mem­o­ry on the north­bound Red Line between the pages of Anna Karenina right before she meets her death under the wheels of, iron­i­cal­ly, a train. Funny how I can remem­ber those details, but not my name, my address, whether I am mar­ried, a moth­er? No trau­ma. Just care­less­ness. I was head­ed to Wrigley to catch the Cubs, read­ing my way through romance and angst, and sim­ply set the book down on the seat beside me. Lost in thought. Now, just lost. Alone in a sea of red, white and blue. Are these my peo­ple? We dress alike. I won­der where home is? After the game, I’ll take the Red Line south, see what happens.

~

Sequined Dress, Never Worn

The sequined dress is a rain­bow in the dark, a sun­rise in the clos­et, a lit fish sparkling
against the spray, its tag dan­gling from the neck like a hook from the mouth. The dress is a mir­ror of stars, con­fet­ti sus­pend­ed mid-toss in parade, a set of mag­ic mark­ers splayed on the table, wait­ing for hands to hold, to col­or out­side the lines. The dress is hope on a hang­er, a thirsty riv­er, a yel­low brick road strewn with red pop­pies, a blue moon, a green-eyed cat, a white-hot wire siz­zling with quick cur­rent. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sequined dress is jazz on mute, a leg­less march­ing band, an ache for the repair­man who fix­es my AC. The god-damned dress is a life, a yearn­ing to escape the dim cor­ner where it lives, where it doesn’t, where it waits, where it rides the ele­va­tor with doors that don’t open, not even when I press the pan­ic button.

~

Ann Weil writes at her home on the cor­ner of Stratford and Avon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and on a deck boat at Snipe’s Point Sandbar off Key West, Florida. Her work has been nom­i­nat­ed for Best of the Net and appears in DMQ Review, Crab Creek Review, 3Elements Review, Whale Road Review, and else­where. Her first chap­book, Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman, was pub­lished in April, 2023 by Yellow Arrow Publishing.