Ann Pedone

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

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.