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2 Poems by Mary Ann Samyn


How Would You Like It

The indignity at the end. I tell myself to tell you.

No one would want this though no one is asked.

Times he was left naked on the too-high bed; 

not allowed to eat, or forced to; talked to like a child;

just ignored, broken, like a piece of furniture;

or crying out, an animal, in a trap, no hope.

So this is what Jesus is all about. And purgatory,

if we are to believe in it still—

Guilt calls me out. Times I waited in the kitchen

while the nurse cared for him. 

And then we pretended, best we could, all is well.

Off to bed. Every one alone. He had to lie there.

—This was a small portion of life though it felt long,

as I recall, my father dead and gone, almost a year.


Lightly, Everywhere

Hazy patch of sound; star cluster.

Took me a minute. Like a party 

at a distance: coyote yips and talk.

I sit up in a room in the woods. 

The other thing is my mother has died

and I’ve come to think about it.

*

Back then, to own a book was really something.

Inside the cover, she wrote her name and address. 

Beautiful cursive, serene, and I can’t look away. 

*

Past dark, a rabbit sits in the grass. 

It’s like Stevens says, but cold October.

I have a question but don’t know how to ask it.

In and out of poems, animals keep their meanings. 

*

I dream a fish bone, translucent, pokes from my wrist. 

What needs to be done seems clear as well.

The doctor uses tweezers… and pulls out a screw,

as logic would have it, though how did it ever fit? 

And then another! Longer than the surgeon put in. 

Pretty soon, I agree; something had felt off.

*

There is clothing I recognize from pictures. 

She kept the patterns too, refolded and tucked away. 

The paper hasn’t made a sound in years. 

*

About the afterlife, lots has been written. 

She’s yet to say a word to me. 


Mary Ann Samyn is the author of six collections of poetry, including Air, Light, Dust, Shadow, Distance (42 Miles Press Prize, 2017). She teaches in the MFA program at West Virginia University.


1 August 2022



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