CHOICES: AN ABORTION SONNET

by Anne Graue

I sat muted in a waiting room, stared at mauve and teal

paintings framed in un-brilliance, the desk Formica. The phone

rang—no ring tones in ‘82—not quite silence, glances not too close—

I knew her—she went to my high school—we both waited.

 

When is a raven like a writing desk?

 

I hate riddles! They follow a maddening logic. The Mad

Hatter and March Hare sit at court, judging. The dormouse asks,

 

Would you like some more tea?

How can I have more when I haven't had any?

Rabbit's fur is softer than anything I’ve ever touched.

 

The act of choosing is easy, and there

in that room tears fell like a solution

and control. Recover, reset the clock.

 

I'm late! No, I got there just in time.

 

Anne Graue exercised her right to choose in 1982, a private decision that was right for her at the time. She is a poet who believes in personal choice and privacy and that there are times when some things need to be public. She wishes for freedom of choice for her daughters—for all daughters. 

SQUID SONNET

by Anne Graue

Seven years after scientists caught the elusive deep-sea cephalopod on video, they saw another. Then lightning struck a third time. Here is a juvenile giant squid approaching, attacking, and then retreating from a ring of pulsating blue LEDs on the Medusa deep-sea camera system. Video by Edie Widder and Nathan Robinson via The New York Times, June 21, 2019

It should be immense, for a giant squid—
The one on camera that emerges
from midnight, from nowhere, reaching for light
the bait in front of the lens. It spreads wide
its suckered tentacles, its ghost arms search
for prey. Millions of neurons in pointless
hunting with a stab at the lighted lure—
its only course to return to shadow.
This sonnet only fulfills its promise
to keep itself contained within its lines.
The squid, too, will adhere to nature’s plan—
male or female, to inject, lay and hatch
offspring in a final endeavor to
become food for crustaceans and sea stars. 

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter, and has poetry appearing in numerous journals and anthologies, online and in print. She also has reviews in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Whale Road Review, and The Rumpus, and at Asitoughttobe.com, where she is a contributing editor.

THE UNBELIEVABLE

by Anne Graue

Werner Jaisli constructed the 'ovniport' after claiming to have received a 'telepathic message' from aliens. Consisting of a circle of white and brown rocks shaped like a star, the unusual 'landing pad' measures approximately 48 meters in diameter and is situated in the small town of Cachi in the province of Salta. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 nraliessi / Flickr via Unexplained Mysteries, August 28, 2017

Lights in the forest spun, burned the grass. The buzzing sound has never left my ears.

I wake up every morning exhausted, smell sulfurous fog, and know that a ship is in the distance,

maybe on another continent; could be here any minute, take me away, bring me

back. No one would be the wiser.

My mother listened to a radio

program that shared  earth's mysteries

I have always known that the Loch Ness Monster was real; I yearned to witness the head

and neck rising out of the water, a scaly throwback to ancient times. Now I watch Nessie

CAM,  find documentaries about aliens, giant sea monsters swimming in the waters

off  many coasts, and I believe those who claim to have seen these things so obscure and yet

so prevalent, even with a beer and bad camera in hand.

How can so many claim to see what does not exist?

Where are the giant squid?

Scientists create documentaries, separate fact from fiction, the wheat from the chaff, searching

for the monster under the bed, the Yeti in the Himalayas; Sasquatch, and the Zone

of Silence; the Chupacabra, in Mexico and parts of Texas, kills livestock, drinks blood, leaves

nothing but empty shells, carcasses. We seem to have faith in existence without evidence.

She said that someone in Russia found Hell, could hear the screams and suffering

with a device lowered to the depths of, well, Hell, under the earth's crust,

where it ought to be, where they said it was. 

So we believe that Sasquatch roams the Oregon forests, the Mothman climbed a bridge

in West Virginia, people have been abducted by extraterrestrials, returned naked to their homes.

Another day she told me Bigfoot traveled through dimensions so would never

be found; that is why he is elusive to capture. When he reappears he may be

a Yeti or he may be the man who claims that he was in the famous Sasquatch film

shown in every documentary. So there it is.

UFOs hover over Phoenix, housewives on Bravo are real, and women are always

the ones who snap.

God

Allah

Buddha

I know what I know.

The ovniport in Argentina lays in wait for the ship to return, and a Nebraska farmer

drives at dusk from fields of hay neatly bailed, sees lights streak across the sky

as if they foretold a story, his story and how he came from a sky of meteors

and constellations, where Pluto was always a planet, and the Big Bang was mute. 

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press), and has published poems in literary journals and anthologies, includingThe Book of Donuts (Terrapin Books), Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus (Bibliotheca Alexandrina), Gluttony (Pure Slush Books),The Plath Poetry Project, One Sentence Poems, Random Sample Review, Into the Void Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, New Verse News, and Rivet Journal. Originally from Kansas, she lives in New York where she reviews poetry for the Saturday Poetry Series atAsitoughttobe.com and literary magazines and chapbooks for NewPages.com.

THE FALL OF CECIL

Photograph of Cecil taken by Brent Stapelkamp before the lion was killed by the American dentist in July 2015. Source: White Wolf Pack.      Anne Graue is a poet and writing instructor living in New York. Her poems appear in Ginosko Literary Journal, The Westchester Review, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly,  American Tanka,  and The New Verse News.

IN THE DEEPEST TRENCH

by Anne Graue

dark/cold/silent until the submerged
vessel/submersible grinds its way
with its own ethic/light and the eel/fish/
snail/dog floats in search of food

in its own water its own dark/cold
swimming deep as deep as the sub
has sunk in search of something
to catalog/write/study/announce/name

in the name of science with God's
backing who commissioned
the naming of all earth's creatures
and so the work continues—a new

species never before subject
to the flashbulbs, its white
translucence necessary
for surviving in the depths

of the Mariana Trench
along the inner slope where
plankton and other food float
into the snail-fish mouth, waved

in by wing-like fins, steered mouth-ward
by the eel-like tail day in and out
where no day is marked with light
or its absence, the existence

is a new discovery for the fish
explorer of the ocean bottom
in deep/dark/cold/blackwater
where the adapted snailfish/eeldog

surviving lightless floating for food
is lost to hubris with no other
survival mode—the naming
changes everything—recognizing

life that has been—protected
by molecules now dependent
on a name which is why someone
took the time to write it down.


Originally from Kansas, Anne Graue lives, writes, and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Ginosko Literary Journal, The New Verse News, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. 

PROMETHEUS' OFFERING

by Anne Graue

A woman found an unusual reptile near her home in Hudson, Maine this week - a two-headed baby snapping turtle. Kathleen Talbot said she went to watch turtle hatchlings cross the road to make sure they each arrived at the other side safely. She noticed one of the turtles had been left behind. "I thought he had two feet in the front. I thought he was deformed. I didn't realize it was two heads until I got him home and washed him. Then he came to life-- and was just starving," she said. She has named the turtle Frank and Stein. Talbot said she doesn't plan to have the dynamic duo as a pet, but does want to make sure Frank and Stein survives. --Kacie Yearout, WLBZ September 25, 2014 Image source: NEWS CENTER

Born as if he knew
there would be difficulty
in deciding the path to take
and needed help
in choosing the way to go
and thus was created

a new perspective a new
argument, modern,
attached to one turtle body
inside a shell protecting

all but his two brains working
against and adjacent
to the matter of his choice.

Or perhaps he didn't know
and this fluke of snapping
turtle DNA would haunt him
throughout his days

of living in a push
and pull world weaker
from having to decide

on the simplest things
which leaf is tastier
which path is greener
which road is safer

which mind to sacrifice.


Anne Graue lives, writes, and teaches writing in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Ginosko Literary Journal, The New Verse News, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. 

LAST PICTURE

by Anne Graue

A couple taking a photo on the edge of a cliff died when they fell hundreds of feet while their young children watched, according to news reports. The Polish couple died after falling from the rocky edge in Cabo da Roca in west Portugal. They were apparently taking a 'selfie' photo of themselves, according to NBC and others, though details of the events leading up to the fall were still hazy. A local English language news site, the Portugal Resident, said the parents had given the children the camera to take a picture. Their children, ages 5 and 6, were turned over to Polish diplomats and are undergoing psychiatric care. --USA Today, August 12, 2014. Photo: Portuguese National Tourist Office via USA Today.

Stepping back, waving
to the boys

smiling as one foot
slips on loose rock
before the other goes

they fall together
back into blue
sky, the camera

still in the hands
of the six-year-old

watching his mother
as she leans
back into the sun

his father as he
reaches for her
to catch her hand

the terror

realizing the cliff
the water below.


Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, VerseWrights, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. She is a reviewer for NewPages.com. 

THE 100 DAYS

by Anne Graue

mark the number
of days of falling
into loss
no handholds
only slippery ones
hanging loosely
from tongues
from threads
beckoning, urging,
cajoling—Hang on
to me! Gotcha!
underwater blips,
radar, red herrings
falling still past
the 100
looking further
down
hundreds more
beckon
want to be spent—
hold onto that longing—
taunt with ropes,
scaffolding,
promise news
further down
much further down.


Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, VerseWrights, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. She is a reviewer for NewPages.com. 

THE STOWAWAY

by Anne Graue





Scaling the fence in San Jose
he smiled at himself,
proud to have not taken
that first drag in the seventh
grade when his friend Gavin
held out the pack of Marlboros.
His breathing was easy now,
and he felt his sneakers
hit the tarmac with some give.
He smiled again
circling the phrase "Homeland Security."
His comb in his back pocket,

he jumped inside the well
of the landing gear, finding
a place to roll his adolescence
into a position that might
outlast the flight, his unconsciousness,
his conscious act of defiance--his parents'
frantic search for their son gone
missing, who was a good kid, didn't smoke
or do drugs, who was smart enough,
who knew that hitching a ride inside
the outside of a 767 was a possibility.
His body folded up easily above the wheels--

he woke in paradise, combed his hair,
remembered how the noise was so great
and the cold was so numbing.


Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Paradigm, Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, and she was a finalist in the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award competition for 2013. She has written reviews of literary magazines for NewPages.com.

IN THE WAKE

by Anne Graue

 

Fuselage will float
from the sky
no longer burning

in the coming days.

Long after the search &
rescue has turned
to recovery;

long after the stages
of grief
have been observed

and discarded,

someone will find
a seatbelt, a cushion,
a glimmer of metal

or they will find
nothing at all.


Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Paradigm, Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, and she was a finalist in the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award competition for 2013. She has written reviews of literary magazines for NewPages.com.