“No woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart” —Louise Bogan
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Poetry online:Gulf War: A Curse
Poetry Magazine
Review of Annie’s forthcoming Calendars by Ron Silliman (Oct. 13, 2002) Ron Silliman
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To order
Calendars from Tupelo Press
To order Eve, An Exaltation of Forms and Annie’s other books from amazon.com
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Annie’s webpage
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For more poetry
Annie Finch
Belly
“So seems this life on earth, compared with the time that is unknown to us: as if you sat feasting with your thanes in wintertime, with a fire burning, and your hall warm, and it rained and snowed and stormed outside; and a sparrow quickly flew through that house, in through one of the doors, and out through the other. ” —Bede
Humming sparrow touching my breast
from deep in the dark,
belly turns one voice open in this place of clouds,
turning, and tethered by deep in the dark.
Sparrow who is coming, looking for rest,
from deep in the dark,
belly reaps winter open in one flying charm,
tree and belief, heavy fish-rushing spark
of mother and daughter, husband and son,
from deep in the dark,
from deep in the dark.
Watching the Oregon Whale
A hard gray wave, her fin, walks out on the water
that thickens to open and then parts open, around her.
Measured by her delved water, I follow her fill
into and out of green light in the depth she has spun
through the twenty-six fathoms of her silent orison,
then sink with her till she rises, lulled with the krill.
Beads of salt spray stop me, like metal crying.
Her cupped face breathes its spouts, like a jewel-wet prong.
In a cormorant’s barnacle path, I trail her, spun
down through my life in the making of her difference,
fixing my mouth, with the offerings of silence,
on her dark whale-road where all green partings run,
where ocean’s hidden bodies twist fathoms around her,
making her green-fed hunger grow fertile as water.
