Two Poems by Anne Brink

Victorians Never Go Out of Style

Somewhere in a country

I once lived inside

it is twilight.

I sense the shadow

at the highest point crouch

down and lay its body over mine.

The train goes past

Eastbourne, and you can’t see

my face properly.

The factory windows

becoming stones along

an anemic road.

I know the hollow places

are a thousand small whirlpools

spinning to their deaths.

A new affair circling

each hour, another

marker in time.

I pulled him into me.

Now everything I collected

has also disappeared.

Bits of rose quartz

stuffed into a suitcase.

Lee Krasner

I taped a mirror to the tree

yesterday,

in order to paint

my face

in a more timely manner.

I am trying to remember

what green looked like

in 1958,

my father’s new face,

what shapes

the leaves crawled

inside of.

In the mid-century,

still climbing a mountain

of porcelain

in my grey coat.

The impermanent spring,

he drinks

water with no ice.

That was the part of me

that was hard to kill off,

that was the killing part.

Feeding the clouds

skin-colored

sentences, making

them more comfortable

to watch as my body aged

to an orange glow.

I cry like I’m on fire

because I am.

The degree to which

fire is threaded

a fine instrument.

Is it possible humans

are beautiful until death