Our Fall 2015 issue contains three excerpts from Anna Meister‘s outstanding poetry series Nothing Granted. We’ve posted two of those poems earlier this season and today we’re very flappy to present the third one below.

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ANGELS FALL UNDER IT see them bend without necks hear them beg
light swallow the itch to scratch catch myself rawer than meat

the shaking after sip that transforms a body I could keep
drowning all these fantasies packaged I could wear blood

would they all come true like apples I try to sit & pray praise
in due time what might come without whatever name god

make me secure hands of little make me pine fuck the drowning
takes too long you don’t have to dream my body is bald & fingered

by you need help call all the cool cold hands I am tired
of the guilty swallow so greedy I feel here is my throat

working teeth marks everywhere I go grant me wrath a cliff
wouldn’t change I’m leaving anything I could come home

sober for somewhere between a room filled with smoke
& commitment I stay lifted naked girl almost recognizable

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ANNA MEISTER is an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University, where she serves as a Goldwater Writing Fellow. A Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominee, her poems are forthcoming in Powder Keg, Whiskey Island, Barrelhouse, The Mackinac, & elsewhere. Anna is a 2015 Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She lives & works in Brooklyn.

Our Fall 2015 issue features three outstanding poems from Anna Meister‘s series Nothing Granted.  We posted one of those poems here back in October, a second one appears below, and look for the third to pop up on our site later this month. 

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BLINK & I’LL SAY OKAY / like a whip / ride
in the passenger / I’ll say it / just
like that / go on being never-enough

I long for you / turning noteless
numb  / ____ is all I say it is / that’s just
how it happened

something important in the mail / as I was
washing / water cutting bruises from my telling
I keep the blade near / hear a buzz overhead

next door the police  / step back
never help / stay soft like a crow

Tuesday around me everywhere / the distance
between summer & what / I accuse myself of
to get it right I give these boys / my navel

as an island / what it is to drag
a nail through it / fuck in a lushness
too predictable  / when I consider

the shit I believe I am / I would never
feel it in my face

when we hear about money / hear
I tried / to love the world / plump
& dumb / & my mouth chasing after

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ANNA MEISTER is an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University, where she serves as a Goldwater Writing Fellow. A Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominee, her poems are forthcoming in Powder Keg, Whiskey Island, Barrelhouse, The Mackinac, & elsewhere. Anna is a 2015 Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She lives & works in Brooklyn.

Our Fall 2015 issue features three outstanding poems by Anna Meister, from her series titled Nothing Granted. We’ve posted one of these poems below, and if you’d like to read the rest, you can purchase the issue in print for $6 or as a good old-fashioned PDF for $3.

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REMEMBER WHEN I’D ALLOW HER TO TALK ABOUT PUSSY.
Expected flush, the natural heat of power. She runs
over my feelings with great sweetness, eyes
intent on me. She used to say You can be
whoever you want, but is tired of me now
that I look at her more. I show up & leave
as myself. Continue past the moment, say I am
thirsty. Pick a million tiny pieces up. We like loss
to ground us, learn to love people quietly.

Outside, flowers like lemons & not
the other way around. I remember her
mouth never closing. When I speak to the sun,
I’m dressed before we hang up. I speak over the light
while she wails & knocks. I exhale
loss, a pretty girl sleeping. If my love expires,
I’ll renew it for the weekend. If I fucked her less I would
be aggressively lonely. Outside, each flower makes
a face. Each looks, she says, the same.

Stopping for gas late, an angel kissed me.
I like how summer bent. We like loss to come,
like to feel it quiet. What a luxury to be without
hands. Whatever I got is enough
to drive back. The silver, long unraveled
eye, the motherfucker rinsing
another fork. We’re clean as the chicken,
but not that inspiring, just
bones in the water when they simmer.

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ANNA MEISTER is an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University, where she serves as a Goldwater Writing Fellow. A Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominee, her poems are forthcoming in Powder Keg, Whiskey Island, Barrelhouse, The Mackinac, & elsewhere. Anna is a 2015 Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She lives & works in Brooklyn.