Poetry - Issue 2 | December 2008
Two Poems by Anna Evans
In England
We do not glorify abstractions:
keeping them lower case
helps to subdue disrespect,
color “hope”
more attainable.
A lack of conformity
separates us, thin layer of grease:
when a door needs opening
the key turns
and the lock won’t stick.
We remember walled cities fall
to implausible tricks.
People practice the national myths—
chin up, stiff upper lip—
with secrets tucked
under newspaper arms.
We talk politics in pubs,
more faithful to football
teams than spouses.
Stereotypes exist,
but the truth is a zebra crossing:
black-white-black-white-black.
About the author
Anna Evans, a British citizen residing in New Jersey, earned her MFA from Bennington College. Conversant in both French and German, Anna has traveled widely in Europe and the Far East, has seen a bullfight in Madrid, and snorkeled off the coast of Malaysia. Anna is the current editor of the Raintown Review, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Measure. Her chapbooks, Swimming and Selected Sonnets, can be obtained from Maverick Duck Press.