On Main Street
In the crunch of October
a single sultry day
fogs windshields,
and traffic slows as drivers
don insouciance.
Once I strolled here—
peeping beneath awnings,
browsing shop windows.
Now, papers take wing,
lift and spiral the walk,
alight in a nearby park.
An old man stumbles past.
Apple-scented autumn,
is doled out by spoonfuls:
boys wear jaunty caps,
lines of children—two by two—
clasp hands, hastened along
by a dour, meddlesome nun.
A bouncy waitress offers refills
in a sidewalk café, biscotti
and spiced gingerbread.
A shuffling, old woman settles
at a table, bends to her book.
No one is shooting yet.
Poppies
One second: driving home
The next: wounds blossom
red poppies from every puncture
every new orifice
masses bloom through bandage
and some, on solitary stems,
grow purple-blue as bruises
Someone with a sense of humor
hangs a painting bedside—poppies—
their fluid drips, blue box beeps
when the poppy red button is pressed
Rainbows of nurses walk a white mist
doctors in well-cut suits and white coats:
questions asked are forgotten
questions answered are forgotten
Bone white poppyhead of femur
rib stems, bud of patella …
metatarsals are shattered petals
Fluid lullabies through veins
languorous music of poppy dreams.
Alpha State
Do you feel his presence
as he enters your room?
Does your skin prickle?
Flush? Burn?
Is his arrival serendipitous,
or did you summon him?
Telepathically? Through
calligraphy on rice paper,
posted the morning
rain transformed the lane?
Has he held his hands
fisted yet not threatening?
Does he say, Pick one,
and when you pick,
open the other,
reveal a monkey pod?
Does a six-sided coin
hide in the closed hand?
Do you pierce it,
thread it on black silk?
Does it hang, warm,
between your breasts?
Ann Howells has edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years, recently taking it digital:www.IllyasHoney.com. Her publications are: Black Crow in Flight (Main Street Rag), Under a Lone Star (Village Books), Letters for My Daughter (Flutter), andCattlemen & Cadillacs, an anthology of D/FW poets she edited (Dallas Poets Community). Her poems appear widely both here and abroad; she has four Pushcart nominations.
Bindweed Magazine 