Transparence
On the road after work, I scan the bridge
for signs of ice. Up ahead a car slides,
spins through traffic,
tires spraying slush. I glide to the shoulder,
stagger to the driver’s door, the woman inside
older, pale as pearl.
I fumble her out onto glazed pavement, offer
my arm. She exhales puffs of frigid air,
raises her eyes to mine:
Hold me. Please, hold me. Enfolding her body,
I think, I’m holding a woman whose name
I do not know.
Later I remember her shaking, how it wouldn’t
stop, how I felt naked, opened
like a jacket.
Each time the woman’s face returns
I remind myself, we stood on an overpass,
nameless and gasping.
Annette Sisson’s poems appear in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust and Moth, Cloudbank, Quartet, Cider Press Review, Tupelo’s Milkweed Anthology, and more. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books (2024); her first, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre (2022). Sisson won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s 2019 poetry prize, and her work has placed in several other contests. Her poems have received multiple nominations for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Find her at www.annettesisson.com, on Facebook or on Instagram.
