Anna Evans was born in England in 1968 and tried several careers including Chemical Engineering, Marketing and Design before her daughters, now aged 6 and 8, were born. She came to the United States with her family in 2000 when her husband was transferred here and they have now been granted permanent residency. She is a former President of the Burlington County Poets in New Jersey, and a founder member of the Quick And Dirty Poets. She has been featured at many readings including the Café Improv in Princeton, the Walt Whitman Center in Camden and the Delaware Valley Poets in Princeton. She has had over ninety poems published in numerous print journals and e-zines, including The Formalist, The Edge City Review, Light Quarterly, Asphodel, One Trick Pony, Exit 13, Verse Libre Quarterly, The Absinthe Literary Review and Tattoo Highway. She won Byline Magazine’s Poetry Award in 2004. In 2005 alone she won the Jeanette Gottlieb Prize for Poetry, all three Poetry prizes awarded at the Philadelphia Writers Conference, the Writer’s Digest Award for Best Rhyming Poem, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. She has taught Children’s Poetry Workshops for the Burlington County Library summer program, and is beginning an MFA in Creative Writing in January 2006. She is editor of the formal poetry e-zine The Barefoot Muse.
In Too Deep
The year I learned to lie, then gave up lying,
I mastered underwater swimming -- deep
beneath the white-capped waves. I dreamed of dying;
the ocean filled my nostrils in my sleep.
Daily, I plunged further, forced to hold
my mouth clamped oyster-tight. Half-fish, half-girl,
I dove through murky waters, bore the cold
and broke the surface faultless as a pearl.
But I had brought two men to fish one sea.
Their nets closed in, and each time I went down
I feared the webbing would entangle me
with all my secrets; I was set to drown
until I saw your lighthouse on the strand,
struck out for shore, and found you -- my dry land.
Originally appeared in The Raintown Review Summer 2005
Backwards Through Wet Grass
for Anthony Hecht
This Jersey fall, the unrelenting rain
has turned the front yards wild, their long, green hair
to otters’ root-slick pelts. Today, again
I step out into gray, breathe loamy air
and catch a scent of home, a British field
I camped in once -- a weekend trip to study
frogs. By day we kept our bodies sealed
in waterproofs, our feet twice-socked in muddy
boots. At night we hid in tents, played games
of “Crazy Eights” beneath the pitter-pat
of rain, now drumming our roll call of names,
now scrabbling on the canvas like a rat.
We were fourteen -- all hormones -- huddled damp
and close, a nest of rabbits, screened from sight
by tent flaps, while our teachers’ hipflask camp
was pitched a hundred yards away. One night,
alone with me, Rob Murphy raised his hand
and touched my cheek. I shivered like a doe
for her first buck. He twined a loosened strand
of my dark hair around his thumb. I know
I twisted with it. He removed my glasses --
no one had ever done that -- and he said
that I was pretty. Afterwards, in classes
I would stare at the back of his blond head
and dream of nameless acts. He nearly kissed
me, but our friends returned. The moment drained
away like runnels in the evening mist,
and came to nothing. Here, now it has rained
so much, that field, that clumsy, gentle boy
come back to me, and I remember this:
the thrumming rain, the unexpected joy
I knew at fourteen, for his almost-kiss.
Won Writer’s Digest Best Rhyming Poem 2005
Published in the Winners’ Anthology
The Lal-Jomi
Love, before the children thinned your hair
and thickened me, remember where we’d eat,
the nights the Cambridge Arms had rung out their
last orders? How you’d wink: you want to share
a curry? and we’d stagger down the street
to our old Indian restaurant, right there
beyond the dry cleaners and just before
the place you bought me roses, among all
those shops (the kind where opening the door
would ring a bell). How, once a week or more,
the Lal-Jomi would call us and we’d fall
through its wide entrance arched like old Lahore?
The waiter, whom we counted as a friend,
would lead us to a curtained booth and smile.
(Our grins implied his shift was near its end;
we tipped well and we didn’t need to spend
long with the menu). First we’d split a pile
of fiery pappadoms; he would unbend
and put the dips and chutneys out for free,
with wine if we were still inclined to drink.
You’d ask for Shikh Kebab, Tikka for me.
(We fed each other bits in privacy).
We’d order so much food back then! I think
we never ate it all. Can’t you still see
the plate warmers which groaned with meat and rice,
hear the sitar music that would play,
or taste the coriander, pungent spice
burning on our tongues like the advice
we swapped in drunken voices? Yet next day
we would say nothing more than: it was nice.
Oh love, remember when the meal was done
how we would press the hot towels to our faces,
suck oranges, spit out the pips for fun,
and split, so keen for bed we’d almost run?
These days we dine in ritzy four star places
but love, you know I really miss that one.
Originally appeared in Exit 13 Issue 12
The Child From Two Doors Down
The child is back, come scuttling down the path
between her part-time home and our back door.
Her hair’s a scarecrow snarl; she needs a bath --
how can they let her out alone? She’s four,
although she acts fourteen; designer names
emboss her jeans and jacket. Shoes untied,
she kicks the grass and will not join the games
my children play. Instead she slinks inside
to trail me round the kitchen as I cook;
she takes in any unexpected crumbs
of love, but still throws me this hungry look.
I did not bear this child. Each time she comes
her mouth gapes wider; she’s the starving guest
I dare not feed, poor cuckoo in my nest.
Originally appeared in The Evansville Review Volume XV
Risqué Business
The comment about bodies wasn’t meant
flirtatiously, and yet it served to lighten
the room the way a shaft of sun will brighten
a gloomy day. Consider the intent,
half-formed, by the first person to invent
a workplace innuendo: it should heighten
team rapport, and at the same time tighten
the grip we have on words we might repent.
For words are hard to hold; we let them fall
and in the act of falling they convert
into the words the listeners want to hear
and offer back in earnest. We have all
allowed ourselves to be embroiled, got hurt;
there’s no joke someone hasn’t found sincere.
Originally appeared in Sunken Lines e-zine #2
Tangled Relationships
My aunt drops kisses on my cousin’s head;
she sets her book aside as though his chatter
charmed her, gently tucks him into bed.
She always says that dirty clothes don’t matter
as long as he’s not hurt -- he needn’t fear
she’ll spank him. My Mom says she’s got no spine
and spoils the boy, who’ll no doubt turn out queer;
but I’ve played ball with him and he seems fine.
In shorts, my aunt’s lean legs could be a girl’s.
I loitered by her door one day and spied
her singing as she lathered the tight curls
that wet my dreams. Yet, if my parents died
and she adopted me, I would be done
with thoughts like those, and glad to be her son.
Originally appeared in The Edge City Review #19