ANNE & LILY

Anne Cecelia Holmes and Lily Ladewig are in the MFA Program for Poets
& Writers at UMass Amherst. Individually, their poems have been
published in Drunken Boat, Front Porch, Juked, and Sir!, among other
places. Poems from the "Natural Wonders" series are forthcoming in
Saltgrass and Jellyfish Magazine.

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I Am A Natural Wonder

Time is for crying about.
I am for the slightest pyramid
built out of neighbors, the face I
have drawn that is now in fashion.
Imagine me a nose that doesn't exist.
Pitch me a question that has always
been certain. I know all the means
to flip a switch and never come
out altered. The way I am blinking
says enough.






I Am A Natural Wonder

Explosion. Now pick the pieces up.
Somebody said I can't give you anything
but love, baby, but now I give you the softness
of the air pillowing around its heat.
Wind is created by warm patches sucked up
by the cold. You were created to be careful.
You tried clipping the wires. You tried
not to detonate it.






I Am A Natural Wonder

I turn the seasons backwards
and after only a few years
nobody can tell the difference.
Instead of boring you
with the new leaf patterns
I'll just say "reverse snowfall"
and you can infer the rest.
Now weather bores me.
I spend my days practicing
a new way to sign my name.
I use cities.






I Am A Natural Wonder

This time I am most comfortable
with the planets as they are.
I have lingered above it all
and I am ready to teach something big.
First I will ask, where are you now?
Have you seen the way I am rotating here?
In my mouth are reminders
of the places I've let go.
It's hard to tell you this without
a face to consider. It's hard to tell
but I can bare my teeth on every
playground in the universe.

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