3 Poems

by Anne Heide

Eleventh Year

Evers who raised
boars beside him

and boars beside the horses

to calm them, never quite
worked how he wanted

tusks snatching hooves

and Evers listening for a cease
at the door

and the fetlock
and the rough pelts
one large mess when he enters

he picks up the horses
and carries them one
at a time to the yard

Evers knows this can happen

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

First Year

She says later she can remember him a large
bull stomping outside
of her mother.

She came 3 months early. They held her in their palms.

Eva knows the memory in her
is in her sleep as an example

but over dinner they can tell her the truth
about his limbs, his lips, that he was the first
one of course to touch her

and she smells his pale arm
again and fur, the way of his body
came eager out of her mother.

Here is the story they told her in synchronization:

It starts with a dead woman. Her husband buried her in the house and
missed her. As the time went on he felt so lonely that he made a
figure her height for company, and dressed it in her yellow clothes.
He set it in front of the fire, and tried to think he had his wife
back again. The next day he went, and when he came home the first
thing he did was to go up to the figure and brush off the ashes from
the fire which had fallen on its face. And so a whole year passed
away.

It starts with a buried child. With yellow skin and white eyes. The
dead wife loved her.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Prehumous

At this point, there is only a hand. It moves up from the sleeve and
is given to you. To your palm. You are handling it. You shy away and
release. The hand is now on the floor. But nothing else in this sandy
mess. And one girl left stuffed between the doorjamb.

Your name is Evers.

You tell her about the landscape. Dark lead. One day you tell her that
it is gone, the land is gone, and all the white trees poking out of
the ground are now ash. Her eyes flick and squeeze your finger. The
index. White index.

Oh leg of mine she hums. Barely to the floor you say. Barely to the
wood. But I can feel it here.

She hums. And the balcony stilled. Shuttered. What you were not
supposed to open. Where is your voice now.

Her name is Early. You will make with her, Eva.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Anne Heide's poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in New American Writing, Notre Dame Review, New Orleans Review, and Court Green, among others. She has three chapbooks forthcoming in early 2008: Specimen, Specimens (Etherdome), Wiving (DGP) and Residuum::Against (Woodland Editions). She edits the poetry journal CAB/NET out of Denver and is working towards a doctorate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.