Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Krysten Hill
In Real Life, They Are Dead
My mother and sisters
wave from the window of the train.
They smile, almost laughing,
and nod at one another. They look out
at me on the platform
and wave again.
The train goes, sounding just like a train.
The clacking begins, the chrome lines blur,
and this departing happiness
stays with me, like some treasure
of the first time, the first time I knew,
the first time I knew
I was really alive
among people and birds,
the white lilies
and white chrysanthemums.
All at Once and Slowly
The way the Assyrians know King Cyrus
with his Persians and arrows
is coming, but who can believe it?
Working the barley through its seasons in the dry fields,
firing the blue into the bricks
with wood from the hills growing lighter. Eating
the bread made by that half-Elamite baker
down the street who changes the recipe
just slightly, making it crisper
with a hint of fire in it.
They look up from the kiln,
the furrows to see dust rising miles away—
everything changing shape into
time remaining—and realize suddenly
their own army drinking in the streets
is the edge of the world.
He said They are the dead, you know
In the dream I hear voices
from the other room so
I walk into that living
room but they—a man in a dark
business suit listening to a
woman in a blue dress and pumps—
are just standing up
from the sofa turning away
plans made toward the door-
way at the back and
they start toward
the other room where also
voices conversations
they are taking
their papers and leaving the
room I entered through another door
I never see their faces
the plans and they are going
should I yes I’ll follow
unconcerned they do not
call or look back might not
even know I am
I never see it—the other
room—I am anxious
and go to the door
that opens into an unlit hall
and their backs spread like ink
into the dim
Anna M. Warrock’s publications include From the Other Room (Slate Roof Press Chapbook Award) and the chapbooks Horizon and Smoke and Stone. Besides appearing in Harvard Review, The Madison Review, Phoebe, Poiesis, and elsewhere, her poems have been set to music, performed at Boston’s Hayden Planetarium, and permanently installed in an MBTA station. www.AnnaMWarrock.com