by Ann Pedone
Tuesday night reading Rimbaud to you over the phone
no, I’m not going to try to read the French. What does
the evening mean other than the lamplight and the moon
somewhere we can’t see. I noticed how old I looked
in the mirror again this morning. I wanted to tell you that.
Sometimes, maybe like tonight. Sometimes after the
gin and the beauty of the evening, I collapse on the bed
thinking about you, though still breathing, and it is Spring.
Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College and has a Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann is the author of the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books, 1991) and perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press, 2020.) Her work has recently appeared in Riggwelter, Ethel Zine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Phare, West Trade Review, The Open Page Literary Journal, Slipstream, Rogue Agent, The French Literary Review, The Shore, and SAND among others.