Anne Higgins Poems

At the Kinzer Mennonite Cemetery
...

Saliva

Even the birds have tongues.
I've seen hummingbird's, fine as a hair,
...

The woman who smoked
her lungs away
and the woman who had a stroke
both lost the air
...

At the kitchen table
at six o'clock.
Dark winter evenings
with my father in his winter underwear,
...

Begin the puzzle; there is no escape.
Restore the upturned ruins of the night;
They do not match by color but by shape.
...

Yeast rises
like praise
clings to the cloth,
leaves its thready face there.
...

The Birdwatcher


Consumed in the sunshine
...

Storm drenching the dry coast,
give me your clammy hand!
If I could hear your kiss
on the back of the peregrine,
...

Henrietta Lacks, like Rose Red,
kept her nails short, but painted them crimson.
Toes, too, so that even at the autopsy,
the assistant saw the chipped red on the dead toes
...

She keeps them in her cabinet of dreams,
that vanishing cabinet:

Staffs made of gleaming chestnut,
...