Three Anna Poems –Kim Stoll

from The Ethics of American Kickboxing by 90s Meg Ryan

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lyrics

"Anna Well-Mannered"

Anna pounds on her walls. I am meat. I am a real meat girl. Half asleep, hears a faint knock-knocking back, hammered into her dream-Anna life. Anna sends out wantings on lanterns and birds, drowns them in ponds. Folds down her bed sheets, hands-and-knees scrubs scuffs off tiled floor. Anna says You’re welcome to the carpet, to where window meets sill. Writes Thank You on paper she stuffs down sink’s drain. Anna digs open scabs, reads trickles of blood replying. She’s asleep in the shower again. Her thoughts a frozen lake, not thawing.

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"What’s Inside of Anna"

Anna is the ground beef lining my skull, the bad milk inside my muscles. Anna’s burnt clay I throw to the river, she’s softening to silt. What even makes an Anna girl? Intestines tangled around more intestines, or words, her small supply which bloats her. Birdseed, her sifting sand, compactness/constipation. She bulges when we tip her head back, funnel down her throat. If air, she deflates, she slouches. The beetles pull her this way and that. She chokes down what she wants to shape herself around, she swallows what I give her.

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"Anna Does the Gardening"

I’m sorry I’ve made her sick again. Will leave her tending to the flowerbeds. Send bees to slip through her humid greenhouse hair. Clouds refuse to shake their weight loose on her Anna-home. She’s puddled vomit in the beansprouts, slumps and sleeps herself against the cabbage. Open mouth to dirt. Sylys pulls the rain down, covers her in arms and hands, in pony hair. What musky earth, bat fur and moth smell. Chicken plucked and boiling. Through her overheating, hears Someone-Sylys saying plain, I love you, your nose and finger bones. Each nightmare that ghosts inside you, Anna, you can overthrow, you know?

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