What We Try to Forget
Ann Howells
Tail lights of the car ahead gleam like feral eyes.
We hunch in the small cave of our headlights.
Darkness claws, determinedly, at our windows.
Evasions and hesitations slither about like fish.
Images reflect in fog-damped windows all around.
They look nothing like we imagine ourselves.
It happened the year Sadie’s long pier collapsed.
We named the rickety sluices Frankie and Johnny.
Sea licked over the rocks and seaweed of low tide.
Still, from time to time I see things no longer there.
~~~~~
Ann Howells’ poetry has recently appeared in Crannog (Ire), San Pedro River Review, and Spillway, among others. She has edited Illya’s Honey since 1999, recently going digital and taking on a co-editor. Her publications are: Black Crow in Flight (Main Street Rag), Under a Lone Star (Village Books Press), Letters for My Daughter (Flutter Press), and Cattlemen and Cadillacs, an anthology of DFW poets she edited (Dallas Poets Community Press).