Topmost Branches

Topmost Branches

A Poem by Marie Anzalone

You advertised for a lapdog

and did not know what to do

when a timber wolf arrived

and rang at the front door.

 

You wanted a sun shower,

but received a deluge.

you imagined a dim bulb

hiding in a back closet

but contracted a lightning storm.

You painted a silk rose

but received a living, breathing,

ravenous forest sheltering

weak things in its topmost

branches, and suffering no fools

to live in its excesses.

 

You wrote the description

for a lackey, and gave it to

a scientist, who promptly

ate it for breakfast with strong coffee

and a Danish on the side;

you pictured a fainting princess

and got Athena and her shield

and her brain, too.

 

You specified, eyes down,

towards the ground; walk 2 paces

behind any man, and stay:

quiet, quiet, quiet.

You forgot that silence

is the nemesis of the poet.

You needed someone nice

to shred documents and erase

your trespasses, but you got

a novelist writing you into

the perfect revenge scene.

 

You were hoping for someone

more timid

than our ancestors watching us

from sideways worlds

and other dimensions,

but I am my mother’s daughter,

and I answer to her and all our sisters

and grandmothers and the teachers

who believed in us

when nobody else would.

 

You wanted your puppet;

you asked for your mouthpiece,

but instead, you got me.

© 2019 Marie Anzalone


Author's Note

Marie Anzalone
for all strong women everywhere being targeted in the backlash: the murdered, the disappeared, the displaced, the fired, the forced out, the impoverished

picture is my own

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Reviews

A powerful message that makes its point with panache. No wasted words, tightly constructed, a wonderful verbal cut and thrust. Great!

Posted 4 Years Ago


1 of 1 people found this review constructive.


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Added on August 29, 2019
Last Updated on September 11, 2019

Author

Marie Anzalone
Marie Anzalone

Xecaracoj, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala



About
Bilingual (English and Spanish) poet, essayist, novelist, grant writer, editor, and technical writer working in Central America. "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to ta.. more..

Writing