After Nineteen Months of Separation
for my son
I.
Sandhills stroll the marsh,
rise into steep sky. Squawks,
knife on rock, swell, spar—
shreds of cirrus, bruised.
A male sage grouse
inflates, deflates, thrusts
and gyrates, darts
and whirls a feckless dance.
First hummingbird whizzes
to willow tip, purple trumpet bloom
nectar-brimmed—surges, bolts,
meadow blank in its wake.
II.
Ache of the animal body
wrenched from itself—
shiver as wind,
numb as crushing day,
flame raw as blood.
III.
Morning, breeze, lake,
fawn rises, flails,
box turtle splits grass,
promenade of turkey,
barred owl, separate in shade.
Sun sifts through ash,
leaves ripple, fingering
shadow. Beyond,
slabs of blue hollow
total the whole,
stroking light, earth,
you, into presence, ever
Clutch
Nothing was automatic. Not
my mother’s grip slipping
on my skin, nor her 1973
Dodge Dart—stubborn
three-speed, stiff wheels,
no power steering.
The color of a clingstone peach.
For graduation she stitched a dorm
quilt, helped me choose
an electric typewriter—even
showed me how to drive
the Dart: shift the gears,
guide the clutch, accelerate,
swell into forward glide.
But that summer she screeched like worn
brakes, ordered me to get
a job, pay my own way.
I raged at her back, swiped
keys from her zippered purse.
After Labor Day, we stood on hot
pavement, limestone dormitory
looming, hours of unloading
boxes, tangledhangers,
bedmaking—the room’s cement
blocks sweating. We walked
to the end of the path, afternoon
heat rolling into thunder.
I couldn’t shake the rain
or lift my feet to go
inside. My mother scudded
through puddles, clicked the Dart’s
key, placed one hand
on the wheel, the other on the rearview
mirror, adjusting. Then
she switched on the wipers, pressed
the gas, released the clutch.
Annette Sisson’s poems can be found in Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust and Moth, The Citron Review, The Lascaux Review, Typishly, One, and many other journals. Her book, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre Press in May 2022—her chapbook, A Casting Off, by Finishing Line in 2019. She was a Mark Strand Scholar for the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference and 2020 BOAAT Writing Fellow. Among other contest placements, she won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s 2019 poetry prize—and was shortlisted for the 2021 Fish Poetry Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Frontier New Voices contest. http://annettesisson.com