Donna Masini is a poet and novelist who was born in Brooklyn and lives in New York City. She graduated from Hunter College and New York University. Her work frequently deals with urban life and the working-class. Her first book of poems, That Kind of Danger, received the Barnard Women Poet’s Prize, chosen by Mona Van Duyn. In addition, she has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant. Masini’s work has appeared in American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, the Paris Review, Ms., KGB Book of Poems, Georgia Review, Parnassus, Boulevard, and Lyric. Masini currently teaches poetry as a part of CUNY Hunter College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. She has also taught at Columbia University and New York University She married Judd Tully in 1986. She lives in New York City. She is currently working on a new novel of obsession, psychoanalysis and class.)
Anxieties
It's like ants
and more ants.
West, east
their little axes
hack and tease.
Your sins. Your back taxes.
This is your Etna,
your senate
of dread, at the axis
of reason, your taxi
to hell. You see
your past tense—
and next? A nest
of jittery ties.
You're ill at ease,
at sea,
almost in-
sane. You've eaten
your saints.
You pray to your sins.
Even sex
is no exit.
Ah, you exist.