Day Three (the first time)

Since the 18^th Century, change has been slow
Then sometimes: a man will have the urge to
replace all of the windows in his house

Once a week we come here and try to figure
out why people still find antiquity so erotic

Last night when I dreamt that you put on a brand-
new pair of shoes and went somewhere

I knew that it wasn’t a symptom of your
commitment issues, but a sign of true love

Or the perfect example of the way some
liquids pool on the ground

Many people have told me that sometimes when
I say “woman”, I actually mean “right this very minute”

I’ve recently started walking in my sleep and now
I’m making a lot of very bad parenting decisions

At my age my estrogen level is the epistemological
equivalent of a ban on flash photography

Give me another day or two and I will have that
list of all of my uterus’ unconscious needs ready
for you to take to the printer’s

I don’t know what kind of coincidence it is that
the word for “whore” is almost exactly the same in
Greek, Italian, French, and Spanish

It must be because they all depend on the very
same external light source

Ann is the author of The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53), as well as numerous chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared in Posit, Texas Review, The American Journal of Poetry, the Dialogist, Barrow Street, 2River, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. Ann has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared as Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week.” She graduated from Bard College with a degree in English Literature, and has a Master’s in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley.