Poetry Breakfast

Soon
by Anne Britting Oleson

In the yellow daylight I am afraid
of nothing except not being in your mind.

I catch my breath and turn about,
thinking: soon.
Thinking: what unbearable agony
there is in waiting to breathe.

Things unlike you repeat you
over and over to me.
Look: I am cooking dinner, slicing vegetables,
and suddenly it is your clean sweat
which is in my nose,
the dimpled skin of your lower back
which is smooth under my hands.

You are in the back of my mind,
that primal part, which does not rationalize
but only knows and acts.

What is really me is compacted.
I am lost inside my own body.
I am thinking: soon.

Anne Britting Oleson has been published widely in the US, UK and Canada. Her two poetry chapbooks, The Church of St. Materiana and The Beauty of It, came out in 2007 and 2010 respectively. Another book, Counting the Days, is scheduled for release in November. Her blog can be found at http://anneboleson.wordpress.com .

On a Day Like Today
by Anne Britting Oleson

The honey glaze of a doughnut
glues my fingers to one another,
to the paper, to this moment.
I try, inexplicably, to extricate
myself from this mess
of my own making, wiping frantically
as though at a tangle
of cobwebs I’ve blundered into
in the dank cellar of today.

Outside the window, the November sky
glowers the grey of infinity.
At any moment I could step
through this pane of glass
which is only time, after all,
and slip forward into the forever
which shines darkly from the other side.

Anne Britting Oleson has been published widely in the US, UK and Canada. Her two poetry chapbooks, The Church of St. Materiana and The Beauty of It, came out in 2007 and 2010 respectively. Another book, Counting the Days, is scheduled for release in November. Her blog can be found at http://anneboleson.wordpress.com .