Ann Pedone
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from WHILE MARIE
Head of most elegant deer is my mother tongue
Flank of aging
cow its translation
I take small comfort in drilling
these holes night and
day. In times of war, here is
a list of all the non-sexual things some
women will do to a collarbone
Hellenization of uninterrupted speech act
competes for attention
with soft underside of forearm
A country can never find
relief with wet fingers still likely to
penetrate. There is the proverbial lack of water
birds just as there is host & debt
Or at least a close approximation of ear to anus
Don’t blame me when the politics
of women reaching for the
last beckoning of the cunt
begins to intersect with
coroner, orange-signed, men not
yet fucked up. If history has shown
us anything, it’s that the mouth
can hold stone
after stone in the last days of empire
They move hurriedly through the occupied streets
searching for a Marxist who’s truly
ambivalent about cock size
Some will end up
buying a horsehair sofa
Some will loan large amounts of
money to the National Trust
Some will spend the night fucking in a last-
ditch effort to prove that
form really does follow content
Like Formica, I have my own troubled history
of public indecency. Trying to
figure out which
parts of one’s sex are dimotiki and which are
better measured in bowls of duck fat
How flaccid are all the Latin names for “debt” and
“water clock”
A ship. The image of a ship. Which is more “corrugated”?
And I sing for the sake
of everything pre-verbal. Jealous as math
Biographical Statement
Ann’s recent books include The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53.) Ann’s poetry, non-fiction and reviews have recently appeared in Michiga Quarterly Review, Posit, Texas Review, ANMLY, The American Journal of Poetry, the Dialogist, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal and small press, αntiphony.