Annis Cassells - Poems

Annis Cassells is a writer, teacher, and life coach in Bakersfield, CA. In 2015 she began to claim her voice as a poet with a poem published in Yellow Chair Review. Her first short story was published in Scarlet Leaf Review. Annis facilitates memoir writing classes for senior adults and conducts writing workshops through her local Art for Healing Program. She is a contributor in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for the Young at Heart. Annis is a member of Writers of Kern, a branch of the California Writers Club. Read her blog at www.thedaymaker.blogspot.com.

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                      Relocation 1973
 
Bruised blueberry tears
From windowpane eyes
Darken my breasts
Heart hammers
Stomach somersaults
Brain bellows
 
What roadblocks will rare up today?
            Sorry we just rented that apartment
            Haven’t had time to take down the sign
 
            My little brown kids are too young
            My little brown kids are too old
 
            You need a bank account
                                      or cash            to get that TV
            Sorry
                        Sorry
                                    Sorry
 
What have I done
moving here?
 
These people
do not see me
do not know who I am
 
Nor
do
they
care.
 
 
                                 First Taste

The Cassells home-place cellar,
A real cellar --  earthen-floored,
must-scented , raven-aired.
 
Grandma Annie Cass - sells
and ten-year-old me,
heave worn wooden doors,
 
throw daylight underground,
pick our way down brick slab steps,
stand still, let our eyes adjust.
 
She leads
Bound for thick, unpainted plank shelves
Jammed against the far wall.
 
She reaches
For a dusty jug
amongst canned pickles, peaches, beans.
 
She pours
a half-pint jelly jar one-quarter full,
announces,  “grape juice.”
 
She savors
A long dark liquid sip
“Ahhhhh.” 
 
She passes
the almost-empty jar
to me.
 
She cautions
“Just a little now.
It makes you feel all warm inside.”
 
She stretches
her eager knobby fingers for the rest
as the jar leaves my lips.
 
We ascend
Hugging peaches and pickles,
like nothing else ever happened down there.
 
 
                      Don’t Slice My Bread

​Don’t slice my bread
Measured segments bore me
The best we can hope for, a yeast bubble
Or slight deviation in height
Uniformity restrains
 
Let me savor haphazard hunks
Catch crumbs
Inhale the yeasty aroma
of finger-hold fissures
Oozing melted butter.
 
Let me gouge out boulders
Leave none untried,
Avoided or ignored.
 
Let me taste it all
In its simplicity
In its complexity
Stale or fresh,
The staff and stuff
of Life