Anne Babson - Poems

My poetry collection The White Trash Pantheon (Vox Press, 2015) and my current chapbook, Poems UnderSurveillance (Finishing Line Press, 2013) are currently available in independent bookstores and on Amazon.  The opera for which I wrote the libretto, entitled Lotus Lives, was performed in the New York and elsewhere in 2012 and is currently being considered for broadcast by WGBH Boston, and another operatic work for which I wrote the libretto is slated for production in California in 2017.  I have been nominated for the Pushcart four times. I have been featured on Poetry Daily.  My work has recently appeared in Iowa Review, Cider Press Review, Southampton Review, Bridges, Barrow Street, Connecticut Review, The Pikeville Review, Rio Grande Review, English Journal, New Song, The Penwood Review, Sow’s Ear, The Madison Review, Atlanta Review,Grasslands Review, WSQ, Global City Review, Comstock Review, California Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, The Red Rock Review, and many other publications.  In Europe, my work has appeared in Current Accounts, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, Nth Position and in Ireland, I was in an issue of Crannóg last year.  In Asia, I was published inQuarterly Literary Review Singapore and Yuan Yang.  I have been anthologized multiple times in both the US and the UK. I have done residencies at Yaddo and Vermont Studio Center.

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             INSOMNIA


The quilt the sheet the mess
The errand I forgot
The dog the shoe the phone
The neighbor’s cats yowling
The low snore of my spouse
The floor creaking the drip
The blink the itch the cough
The sharp twinge down my thigh
The lips of my mother
Mouthing old rejections
The old embarrassed cringe
The regret the deep breath
The dark the salt truck light
The stillness the stillness

              REPLY ALL
 
This e-mail is addressed to Facebook friends.
It c-cs i-o-us and o-m-g.
It abbreviates, says nothing, then ends
In l-o-ls – the language of Ouija,
The dead spamming the dead in effigy.
I tweet on twitter with nothing to say.
I have no thoughts, but I have street cred, G.
Communication? My communiqué
Might conversate; meaning is refugee.
Eloquence?  Google “archeology.”