Atmosphere and Door

Allow me to suffer. Allow me to build my house of burned brick and
then. Allow me a pasture of Here.

Allow me the Grace once called question. Because if it is ever the
answer I’d want, I’d never.

Allow me Good News.

But Sight

Too, my ready hand

drops to the feet of boy.

Incomprehensible skin

sweated.

So I roll undone, open.

And pleasing boy barefoot,                          atop.

Long ago there was a Robin Hood

now sleep.

Speak

I am no                       jewel                thief     cutter.  I am not the red haired giant I seam

in this place. Certain I’ll show that no one I say is as big I am as I draw my forged
mouth. 

I am not a robber the color of

I am not my blushed hair.

Some say        no                    I say

how tall I am can be frightening & how I pull my false teeth out

how I mourn by fire and arms         how I am a baritone &

how my house is all too small, it folds up and into me.

                                                                   “I know who my comforter is”

Whole

An evidence:

       This is a window and not a house
            & a door & not a house
            & a roof & not a house.

       Who lives in all these pieces.

            This is not a shoreline
            or a river
            of river.

            This is not a remembered place
            not lake
            not sand.  

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