Anna Evans: Two Poems

Hitchhiker | Stalking

Hitchhiker

She stands on the shoulder, brittle
and bare-limbed as a blackberry bush
picked clean before fall. Planted
in your car she says I was ruined
because I didn't understand
the weather. Her story is changeable
as clouds: shapes appear; bits break off;
the sky darkens. She is all thorns.
She could pull clouds over your eyes,
bury your body in ice. I enjoyed falling,
she says. It felt like flying home.

Stalking

Born in camouflage, Daphne ripened to learn
how easily one can bag a doe (with faun)
and where men will set snares on the trail.

Her long white fingers, cleaning her rifle
by the campfire, kindled a hotter flame
in one who offered to keep her in ammunition

but she preferred to buy her own bullets,
ignored his SUV's constant presence
in the rear-view mirror of her jeep.

He deluged her cabin with cards from the Far Side
cartoons — cows with guns; his painful print
targeted her in and out of season.

He serenaded her under her window
with a cardboard lyre, crashed the NRA
ball dressed as Cupid, complete with arrows.

Daphne moved permit zones, bought green contacts
and changed her name to Laurel; a natural hunter,
she never chose to run when she could hide.

Poet's Biography:

A British citizen but permanent US resident, Anna Evans has had over 80 poems published in journals including The Formalist, The Edge City Review, Light Quarterly and Exit 13. Her prizes in 2005 include the Jeanette Gottlieb Award and the Writer's Digest Award for best rhyming poem. She is enrolled in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Bennington College and is editor of the formal poetry e-zine The Barefoot Muse.