TO EMILY DICKINSON, ON THE DEATH OF SINÉAD O’CONNOR

by Anne Myles

I’m thinking of you, centaur sister,

and of this other, lost now—

stripped words beating meters

against God’s battlements

Young I discovered both of you,

needing the keen of it—

hymns of love ingathered

only in separation

Two queens I can’t approach,

though I too felt the rising

to stitch the rage with beauty,

to feel my throat open

in despised prophecy–

flames of our temperament leaping

in stony rooms of limitation,

clawed by what we cannot name—

Both of you dead in your fifties

while I scan a new horizon—

still looking for that vanishing green

pasture to lie down in

Anne Myles is the author of Late Epistle, winner of Sappho's Prize in Poetry (Headmistress Press, 2023) and What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer (Final Thursday Press, 2022). She is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa and lives in Greensboro, NC.

IN WATERLOO

by Anne Myles

A Laredo man living in Iowa is critically ill with COVID-19, and thanks to a co-worker who refused to give up, he has reconnected with his family. "I just feel like I made a Facebook post, answered a few messages and calls, but it was everyone's efforts that came together. It was the small things that added up to one big thing and that was getting to find Jose's family." Zach Medhaug and Jose Ayala, a Laredo native, are among the dozens of Tyson employees who tested positive for COVID-19 after an alleged outbreak at their Waterloo, Iowa facility. —KGNS.tv, May 4, 2020

there’s a wild, forgotten greenbelt
wrapping the creeks for miles.
The trees are close and full of quiet;
they open to still mirror pools.
Breath, footsteps, birdsong,
deer-dash, otter-splash.
In May, a sea of Virginia bluebells,
light purplish spume above deep leaves,
floods the woods to the edge of sight.

In Waterloo we watch the waves
of a century’s migrations break:
Black, Mexican, Bosnian,
Burmese, Congolese, Micronesian.
City of refugees and of no refuge,
city of industries here and gone
where the remnant of Rath Packing
still looms downtown, a darkened shell.
Scarred city river-riven—east side,
west side—half-sutured by ten bridges,
the Cedar silted, shallow, shining.

In Waterloo four green goddesses
from atop a long-demolished courthouse
cling to the brick roof of River Plaza:
Agriculture, Science, Justice, Knowledge.
They pose, holding vague implements,
blank faces still, almost compassionate.
Their skin burns hot in prairie sun.

*

In Waterloo, at the far edge of town,
sprawls the Tyson plant. Neighbors
of many languages work side by side
in the chill, the clang, the cutting, the flesh,
the coughing, the fevers, the fear.
The line for testing coils around the lot;
over a thousand positive, they’re living
the consequences of all that makes us.

At Tyson, maintenance worker Zach
made friends with self-contained José.
Zach got the virus but was barely sick;
José’s ventilated and unresponsive.
Zach calls every day to talk to him,
play music. He posted José’s picture
and found his family back in Laredo.
They’re fighting for him together now
in Waterloo, not giving up faint hope.

The plant closed, but has reopened.
Outside, the typical scraggly rally.
We line up by the drive at shift-change,
waving, holding signs: Protect Workers.
Estamos Con Ustedes. Capitalism
is the Pandemic. Through car windows
masked faces glance back quickly,
difficult to read. A few hands lift.
We hear faint screaming: pigs or gears?
Grass flares, the sky throbs blue,
everything’s sliced hard against it.

*

And now a long-ago lover phones
to ask if I’m okay. She’s seen Waterloo
on Maddow, CNN. I say I’m fine,
safe as can be. I tell her walking
the trails here makes me happy.
I tell her I see my privilege;
I didn’t even know about the plant
twelve minutes from my house.
I try to explain, it’s like I married
a city instead of a person, so far
from where I started, my own diaspora,
but after decades I still don’t know it.
I say, it’s more than what you hear.
I say, our bluebells are so beautiful.

Anne Myles retired from the University of Northern Iowa, where she was an Associate Professor of English. She is working on an MFA in poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems have appeared in journals including North American Review, Friends Journal, Lavender Review, Gyroscope Review, Green Briar Review, and Whale Road Review.

BLACK ANGEL

by Anne Myles

Last week, a long-awaited report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change showed that the worst consequences of global warming would occur even sooner than previously thought. Listen to the story of the findings at The Daily podcast.


Cellar cracks seep after long days of rain
in summer-like October. The ground is full,
water pressing out like tears that can’t be held,
staking its claim to prairie’s ancient ocean.
I hear the crows call now! and now! again
as gold leaves fall and grass glows emerald,
and far away, a hurricane archangel
rearranges edges of the continent.
Oh angel, I’ve heard myself plead half-aloud
sometimes in longing, with no one to address;
oh crow, fierce eye, what lies beyond the clouds?
We see the years roll towards an emptiness
of heat-scorched fields, drowned earth, and barren reef.
Let your black wing fold itself around our grief.

Originally from New York, Anne Myles is associate professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. A specialist in early American literature, she has recently rediscovered her poetic voice, one effect of the present troubles she is thankful for. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ghost City Review, Ink and Nebula, Friends Journal, Lavender Review, and Thimble.

IN THIS SEASON

by Anne Myles

On the boulevard, strange markings have appeared:

white dots in the corner of some sidewalk segments.

The mystery intrudes on us, unsettling.

A neighbor stands looking but she doesn’t know either.

Later, a letter from the city informs us

they show each section that’s heaved up, sunken,

cracked, uneven; we must replace them or the city will.

The segments lie in earthen beds

that breathe and toss across the seasons.

Why can’t they just remain, I wonder,

bearing their own flawed histories?

The dying ashes were cut down in December;

now in July we hear the roar of stump-grinders.

Beside the bare dirt circles left behind,

saplings of different species stand between their guys

like shy children in an unfamiliar class.

On TV I watch the skycam pan

over the mountains and lavish fields of France,

roads winding, dazed with so much past,

while the peloton grinds upwards. A rider falls back,

grimacing; the announcer cries out, oh, he’s cracked!

Outside, my neighbor Roger walks by slowly with his dog;

I’ve been watching them for years.

Now both will die soon, only one of them from age.

He relates his sentence calmly.

Whenever he appears, I can’t stop wondering

what he sees in the evening sky now, in the trees.

An artist, he has painted the fields of Iowa

and over them a plot of faint ruled lines,

as if seeing left a trace on what is seen.

This is a time of seeing, isn’t it.

This is a season of waiting for what comes.

The plot laid bare at last, and then what happens?

As the child asks her mother reading a story.

And this is not simply a thing that happened once.

This is a thing that is still happening

and will continue to happen.

This is an incredible, unprecedented moment—

that’s what I read in the news today.

The crickets have begun to sing at dusk,

reminding me of every summer I have lived—

that smell in the breeze as the leaves lift—

and everything that won’t happen any more.

I want it back if only to look at and remember.

I want my country back. I want to step

on every sidewalk crack and tilt as if

there were no question, as if it all were just what is.


Author's Note: The italicized lines in the penultimate stanza are from the opinion piece "Trump, Treasonous Traitor" by Charles M. Blow, New York Times, July 15, 2018.

Originally from New York, Anne Myles is associate professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. A specialist in early American literature, she has recently rediscovered her poetic voice, one effect of the present troubles she is thankful for. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ghost City Review, Ink and Nebula, Friends Journal, Lavender Review, and Thimble.