Anne Graue
Night Swimming at Tuttle Creek
I remember that night. I couldn’t grasp my thoughts quickly enough to stop things from
happening. You acted as if being with me were a sideline to the real work of blues guitar licks
and buddies you were focused on like someone with a work ethic that wouldn’t let you stop, be
with me only, see yourself from inside, not through the eyes of other guys. Giving in to me was
giving up. In the water, the brother of your friend, kisses in water, the flash of a foot on a thigh,
an arm brushing an arm in weightless water so it didn’t feel like touching—in water nothing
matters. Later, on the warm car’s hood—no touching, only talk—I didn’t know where you were,
where you’d gone, or where you’d been.
"Night Swimming at Tuttle Creek" was previously published in the Poetry Coop.
Dear Frank
I couldn’t have known you
your oranges gone moldy
wrapped in fuzzy green
and I miles away
from Fire Island
when I was 4
and you 10 times that.
If only
I’d been older
you’d been younger
we’d’ve had a beer
in the 80s in Brothers Tavern
in Aggieville REM playing
“So. Central Rain” murmuring
dark nonthreatening (I’m sorry)
the oaken tables reckoning
under the occasional
amber damp.
"Dear Frank" was previously published in Leon Literary Review, issue 21.
For Sale at the Art Fair
Picasso’s Olga
tubes of paint
Buddha statues
the etching of Poe’s house
and the frame it is in
velvet scarves
lamps in Seagram’s
bottles & small worlds
in mason jars
watercolors
collages
truth
paintings of rabbits
abducted by aliens
the hours at the wheel
the clay beneath the skin
the crack in the porcelain
the shape of the nails
the tips and the moons
the plea in the terracotta
"For Sale at the Art Fair" was previously published in Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, The Art Issue.
Anne Graue (she/her) is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press) and a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Verse Daily, Poet Lore, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Canary, The Ilanot Review, Leon Literary Review, SWWIM Every Day, The Museum of Americana, The Wild Word, and Anthropocene Poetry Journal. She has work forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry, Neologism Poetry Journal, and the Origami Poems Project. She is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review.
