The string
Trains up the vine, binds
the love letters, until
--ever? Holds mittens in
the sleeves, bundles
magazines, makes a wick,
draws music through
a violin, beads into a necklace,
tugs the toy, tethers what
floats, pulls the window shade
to keep out the light.
Forms a bakery box handle,
a cat’s cradle. Ties pencil
to the clipboard.
Knotted square or in a bow,
thicker than thread,
thinner than rope, a moral
imperative to contain:
only loosen, but not enough
to come undone.
If Broken
--how it calls to us: the patched, the glued, the rescue
mission, a taped crack in the window--snagged
from chipped cup’s edge, torn cuff, busted sidewalk,
knothole, leak--lean to comfort divorcees, orphans–-
while the oath easily made grows crazed in small faults,
fissures of delay, crumpled notes--the uncracked egg
waits, breaking its only value – crying into its destiny--
anything whole, eyes close for the marring rift, scorch,
inevitable fender dents, land slumps, sprains--life
moves in scars--some gates jam, neither open nor closed
bruising knuckles, throwing splinters--the bandage
intrigues more than the jewel--
Change
Don’t put that in your mouth,
my mother says. Dirty penny.
But the coppery taste
seems to buzz on my tongue.
You don’t know where it’s been.
Now this new nickel: cool, smooth.
You don’t know who touched it.
Somewhere an old man pulls
an Andy Jackson from a worn wallet.
A woman hands over a fiver
for bread and orange juice.
With whom do I commune
through this silvery wafer?
Where will my next nickel go?
I want to be a broken bank:
spill out coins,
pass them around, handing
them to people who
don’t know where they’ve been,
don’t know how I touched them.
*
JoAnn Anglin, a member of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol (Writers of the New Sun), has a chapbook, Words Like Knives, Like Feathers (Rattlesnake Press), and poems in The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems, in Tule Review, Rattlesnake Review, The Pagan Muse, and Voces del Nuevo Sol.