Anna V.Q. Ross across four issues
Anna V.Q. Ross is a poet whose books include If a Storm and Flutter, Kick, along with the chapbooks Figuring and Hawk Weather. Her honors include the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry, the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, a Fulbright fellowship, and support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and serves as poetry editor for Salamander.
Four historical issues record her early work. Issue 1 preserves “After Our Agreement by the Gas Station,” Issue 2 preserves “Styx,” Issue 5 preserves “In the Year of the Snake,” and Issue 10 records “Green Amber Honeymoon.” The surviving poems move through marriage, domestic ritual, rivers, grief, migration, winter coastlines, deer, and the pressure of memory on ordinary landscapes.
After Our Agreement by the Gas Station
Having worn you
across my cheek for so long,
this new name is not strange
or stiff, but expectant, like
the muskrat lodge by the Charles
this afternoon, the boats trussed
and white across a river
of floating gulls. Nights
lift over untwisted and deep
now, each morning
my slippers are a surprise,
the kitchen table
hard and tree-frog
creaky with studded legs. You
are up and gone already,
leaving an altar of coffee mug
and bagel crumbs and enough
juice for one more glass. Today
I have parceled myself
in small scraps, one for each
of our coming years. Standing here
against the floorboards, holding
the air that is you, whole and perfect,
I am only my hands.
Styx
This day I see you dune red and birthed
to a ligament of months, numbered
in the particular nod and tilt of evening. Here
is the mullioned river I cross each hour.
To the eight-clawed dragon boats who follow,
I offer cloth to burn and scatter, and a punctured
breath to swallow whole. Each night you dreamt
of walking with your hair fallen down in widow’s
curls, walked until your feet bled of joy and
spoke about it as others do of flight, the first step
a gliding, feathers caught in the updraft, then
a hollow-boned lifting to perch. These years
since, I have climbed three mountains,
washed five countries from my face,
and my stubbled scalp has grown drumlin
smoothed, cold as an anniversary.
In the Year of the Snake
A gull grips the roof ridge across
from my kitchen window. Here
in Dorchester-by-the-sea, where
the Red Line and Expressway clutch
the coast, the animals don’t
blink, and there are so many
books I’ve yet to read, so
many things unswept; the front
garden maculate with leaves
and rubbish, the gate fixed crooked.
On the ferry out to Nantucket
at New Years, Brian told us to watch
for deer, that when the mainland
became too crowded they would swim
for island pasture, a myth
which became certain each time
they arrived. Some five o’clock
evenings now, when the bay air lifts
enough to find my winter gable,
I look for them, don’t you?
Antler nubs, raised just above
the currents, hooves churning away
from the shatter-frozen shore,
navigating.
Green Amber Honeymoon
Issue 10 preserves the title and authorship of “Green Amber Honeymoon.” The poem text itself is absent from the surviving page.
Books and later work
Anna V.Q. Ross’s author site gathers her books, poems, readings, and awards. Red Hen Press documents Flutter, Kick, her earlier collections, fellowships, publications, and editorial work.