Anne Moore Odell
Pop-Up Shrines
Bright green moss on trees trunks
The dog eating little dropped pears
that have shriveled in the snow
A real vacation is to be just water: an amazing animal
Cloaked as a stream flowing under ice under snow
Lose everything I thought I’d know forever:
The correct order of the Little House Books
The red rubber hot water bottle that twelve year old girls carry as a badge after a complaint
at the nurse’s office: “Shouting hazzanas at the Pleiades," a Line from Youth by Frank Horne
What sustains:
The old dam half stays,
the paper mill burnt away.
What can and can't be copyrighted:
The enamel on the teeth–no
The teeth themselves–yes.
Skiing one night before the Full Wolf Moon in January around the cemetery
where your daughter is buried. Talking about dinner and going to a play
and your other children. Skiing around the edges by the stone walls and old Sugar Maples,
all dying. One grave over has a solar powered candle that is glowing even with snow
on top of it, making a perfect globe of light. The dead are under us.
The dead have entered the water cycle. The dead don't go cross country skiing.
There is a cross by the roadway made of vinyl siding. At the crash site. Not made by you.
A fresh lining of snow
Snow on the side of the road
Snow on stuffed animals
On pop-up shrines
Snow on bus stops
With QR codes for escorts
Graffiti on every surface
Snow on bus stop benches
The eyes find a line and hold it
Five Daughters All Named Carryme
First daughter does it all right. Marches straight ahead.
Second daughter does it, mostly, usually. Slyly, asks “me?”
Third daughter is bored, in your face. Tongue out.
Fourth, barely there. Maybe she moved away young?
Fifth daughter does nothing. Stays a baby for life.
First daughter understands reading recipes.
First daughter does the first 100 Fibonacci numbers
In her head to sleep: 354,224,848,179,261,915,075
Quadrillion. Quintillion. Thinks they are dances from
Another planet. Enough straight lines crisscross into an aster.
Second daughter walks in the giant bootprints left
By the workmen in the mud. She can heel/toe
In a trenchcoat into any lunchroom, steal the grapes
From your plate, spit the pits into your hand
And leave you wondering what happened here.
Third daughter hip thrusts; she struts on winged
heels; she wears shorts with juicy embroidered.
Once, she got into a muscle car instead of heading into
The cafeteria. Five years passed yet it was the same
Lunch period. Her apple was still fresh so she bit it.
Fourth daughter walked into the forest without
Looking back. She kicked off First’s hand-me-down
Sneakers and went barefoot into the crowded woods.
She might have grown wings and a beak and flown
Up to perch on branches, then migrated south. Maybe.
Fifth daughter goes googoogaga. Also wahhh. Wahhh.
She has blink-blink powers with big eyes that click
Open and shut. People take turns holding her up.
Her feet have never touched the ground. It started
Like care but Fifth daughter is a fulltime shield.
Mother. You must be so proud, so many egg cartons.
Storyteller. You must guard your multiple narratives.
Marketer. What can’t you sell to this glorious horde?
Lover. Line up for a ride, a schlep, a romp, a licking.
Daughter. “A missile fragment in a schoolyard” NYT
Anne Moore Odell lives, teaches, and walks around Southern Vermont. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Miscellany, The Broken Plate, Grey Sparrow Journal, and more.