Two Poems from Anne Heide
L u l l a b y t o S h a t t e r
If you sit on the back door
your shoes off.
Then watch the sailors
come up from the lake.
*
You've covered your hair
they'll never know how red
it is
and how your son steals
it while you sleep to
start fires or make
reef knots.
*
You cut your nails short
before they leave
they'll never leave
you'll have something
to remember:
half-moons stuck in
the parsley soil.
*
Whistling through your lips,
you're really saying "drown"
to all the men outside shooting down robins
they know how fast their hearts can beat.
*
Send them off with photographs of those gulls
you found
perched, breathless
on your nightstand.
And drape your hair, over, again, wingless.
L u l l a b y t o P a n i c
You suggest
watch for sweat
this is the first
body I'll hold onto
in dearest shorthand.
Hair to your knees
white to her elbows
interrupted, and like
timber, you come hurried.
These joints have a way
of felling you by holding
oh
so static sounds like this.
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