home> poets> Anne Stewart poems
 

about Anne Stewart       back to Anne’s page           Members’ Events Listing       Shop Online
 
last update: 31st Oct23

 

 
 

the streets so quiet now                      For a Change

 

The First Parent                      Become Psychotic

 

the streets so quiet now

instead of a visit, I am standing in the kitchen
phone in one hand cheery teacup in the other
listening to my friend
 
                                        and taking a mental snap
as the final brushstroke of the artwork
framed in the window through the lace-patterned net
with its curvy pleats rolling along nicely
falls into place
 
                             where a black cat with white cheeks
has parked in front of the nearside front wheel
of the bright blue Corsa in the driveway
watching across the street as though
anything might happen any minute now
and across the street
 
                                     framed in his window
a tall man holding a long glass caught
in mid-sweep down to the sofa holds still
to watch the cat watching across the street
as though anything might happen
any minute now and I am watching
and listening knowing
 
                                         the boy from three doors down
coming home on his scooter will frighten the cat
who will scoot behind the Corsa and duck away
under next door’s fence into the alley
 
                                                         and the tall man
with the long glass will resume his sweep down
onto the sofa and now
 
                             the boy has shot through
the frame and I am listening and watching
the empty street just as though
any minute now’
 

Anne Stewart

first published in The Frogmore Papers, 2021;
in collection any minute now / în orice clipă, Eng/Rom, 2023, Eikon (Bucharest),
ISBN 978-606-49-0916-9;



back to top

 

For a change

something innocent this way comes.
 
No learned cynicism, no imminent threat.
 
See it as some long-haired girl not tanned yet
looking to do some good in the world.
 
Maybe she wants to be a paramedic.
Bike it in fast to where only a bike can get.
 
She wants to save a body at least
if not a soul.
 
Let it be catching. Let it come to us all
like an infection.
 
Let it be this Local
this Determined
Unstoppable
 
as the saints and angels
of our every day.
 
We are the cells it needs
to go viral.
 

Anne Stewart

in collection The Last Parent, April 2019, Second Light Publications,
ISBN 978-0-9927088-3-2;
also in Eng/Rom short collection, Let It Come to Us All, 2017, Integral (Bucharest, print)
and Contemporary Literature Press (Bucharest, online), ISBN 978-6-0687825-3-9 / 978-6-0676009-2-6;
first published in anthology Poems for a Liminal Age, 2015, SPM Publications,
ISBN 978-0-9927055-6-5



back to top

 

poem 1 from sequence The Last Parent:

The First Parent

She nearly died…
 
… lay comatose for weeks, Dad or I always with her
through visiting times
 
and when they called us in to ask ‘What if?’
we had no doubt we knew her mind.
 
“Let her go.” we said, “She won’t want to be revived.”
She nearly died…
 
… then, making would-be murderers of us both, leapt out
from that dread place and came alive.
 
For three years more, we played her games:
Yahtzee, cribbage, count. She made us laugh.
 
She was as she had always been – a sharp wit,
a lit fuse, intensely aggravating. And she kept control.
 
Strict diet of exactly what she wanted when; her nightly glass
that tended to a tumblerful of brandy, gin.
 
Incomprehensible to us, the complex schedule of her medication,
those unnavigable names that she reeled off as easily
 
as all her favourite flavours of ice cream – she knew their natures,
their conflicts, every bit as well as children knew
 
their theropods and pterosaurs, and seemed to love them
much the same. Until the will to want gave out.
 
We managed well enough. Her oxygen, ventilator, nebulizer –
their idiosyncrasies revealed themselves to us.
 
I gained the bonus of her gratis years. And though it seemed to me
I’d shouldered more than a daughter’s share of the load,
 
it is his dying that makes me see the overwhelming duty
fell on him. He is the last. Both himself and the receptacle
 
for all that others miss of his lost wife. And with his going,
I lose them both; I leave the ward with the legacy
 
of those final decisions I made for him –
the how and when to let him go.
 
His nurses have been kind. Soon the Medical Certificate
will evidence his death – mark the point where relationship
 
steps aside, administrative process shifts into its place.
They try to not-watch me leaving.
 
What should I do now?
It begins.
 

Anne Stewart

in collection The Last Parent, April 2019, Second Light Publications,
ISBN 978-0-9927088-3-2;
first published as She nearly died, Antiphon online journal and audio online, 2017



back to top

 

poem 2 from sequence The Last Parent:

Become Psychotic

At such a time, you must divide yourself
into separate parts.
 
One part is allowed to feel the loss.
The other must substitute clubs for hearts.
 
The one is permitted to fall apart.
The other must keep itself intact
 
and so must initiate divorce –
it is the other who will take charge,
 
will have no use for a weaker part.
The weaker part will tug along
 
on a slackening/tightening string.
The process will run its course.
 

Anne Stewart

in collection The Last Parent, April 2019, Second Light Publications,
ISBN 978-0-9927088-3-2;
first published in ARTEMISpoetry, Issue 15, November 2015



back to top