Opium's Lullaby
Peacock Light
In The Beginning

Opium's Lullaby

When the city sings
to me I weep,
slip into lines pretend,
wonder if what I hear
is dryads playing
penny whistles outside
in the shrubbery.
Then comes the rhythm
the bottom notes, tribal
and I breathe, float
as curtains loft and puff
with temperate air, music
of the late-early city.
Finally the warning whistle
distant blast, dissonance
to the ping and whine
of box cars taking the curve,
lullaby metal. No one can
hold me, tell the song
I am meant to hear, the city sings.

Peacock Light

i

A pallet of rain
over night's window
and an egret waits
above the river
flooded beyond.

She raises one wing
as water calling the sky
then pulls away.

ii

Between the sky and water
blue and white iris,
between my hands
what I no longer hold
like the banks wider and wider
swelling to great to sustain
the saturated, the earth.

iii

Let go, going under
green water woven
into unraveling currents.
A silver horizon opens, forecasting
something only the water asked
only the river will receive.

In The Beginning

You are alone with ghosts,
for those you've loved,
the ones who've heard the word,
are gone. The living need you
and you feel this, so you choose:
the cut, the poison, the radiation.

You fall off the world in pain,
pitch yourself to the edge
to watch life shrink like a balloon.
You tell the ghosts: I am not you —
but you are. You shiver in sunlight
watch infomercials at 3:00 AM.

While others sleep, you pull your mind
to the time at hand, listen to racoons
raid the neighbor's trash and allow
the collective laughter to be your laughter —
you've never been afraid before

Ann-Marie Madden Irwin got lost in a dark wood, in the middle of her life. No joke. After two years of cancer treatment (rectal, butt jokes are appropriate right now) she is getting back to submitting work, revising work, life. She is a poet, photographer and unabashed omnivore.. She was an adjunct professor teaching freshman comp in San Antonio and loving it, yes, until the big C. She's lived in NYC, Ridgefield, CT, Portsmouth RI, Fall River and Boston MA, and now lives in Austin, TX with bass-player husband.. Her own blog can be found at ammiblog.wordpress.com and she has just launched a website 12poets.com. Her poetry, most recently, has been published in The Warwick Review, (four poems, but who's counting?) And the current (May) issue of  Chest magazine. The list of respectful rejections is much longer. The list of past publication, a few years back is that much longer still.