Maggie Evans

Says a Perfect Surprise
 
a.
Nervous she begins. Shaking-even nervous she begins
the piece. Chin cupped in its place just like every other time.
 
There’s no reason for worry. This is a bowl of oranges and
can be set on the table as such. This is a letter again
 
to her father or her teacher. Please. It is a bowl.
The wide notes surprising her like every other time.
 
 
b.
Nervous she begins. Shaking-even nervous she begins
her piece. But when she stammers she is a stammerer. No two
 
ways. So she imagines the glass in her hand is a long history.
Going very far back. Though the glass in her hand is only once
 
like the river. This calms her. Looking
into history and seeing her one big eye. No, two.
 
 
c.
Nervous she begins. Shaking-even nervous she begins
to piece it together. She’s going to have to leave.
 
There’s nothing for it. Some days are walking backward
days and other days are just fine except the trembling and others even
 
are just fine fine. Like really fine. Even so. The oranges
tremble in their trembling bowl and say: you have to leave.
 
 
 
 
Nothing Like Good Teeth
 
The shadow cow of your Farm
Dreams is lowing
and you are
 
mending fences. Whistling.
Finding reasons to be
somewhere else
 
all the time. Giving your
children the wrong number.
You hear hooves
 
on the night-grass. Listen.
Avoiding this won’t
make it different.
 
There’s a farm.
You’ll live on it oneday.
 
 
 
 
Degrees of Animal
 
They make an algebra
of everything: these days
 
(a trigonometry of forest fires, a calculus
of how bombs find weddings).
 
Even so. The variable planes of your white legs
flash white moonlight into small and infinite deserts
 
and I cannot think of parallel lines.
No, nor intersections neither,
 
though by your smiling.
Well. (Well, yes.) Oh. Oh
 
deer— (Don’t raise your hand hello.
You will only be
 
embarrassed if you think it is a moment
your white legs I mean.)
 
your white legs
walk me away
 
from the humid somekind
of closing and into the cool open
 
of two. Two in the glade. Two
white legs. Two white in the moonlight
 
lines that neither touch nor never touch.
Two. (Pulse and again.) Two--
 
your white legs walk me
 
 
 

 
Maggie Evans has poems published or forthcoming (also as Meagan Evans) in Colorado Review, Bellingham Review, InDigest, Phoebe, Ironhorse Review, DIAGRAM, aliceblue review, Black Warrior Review, and others. Her poem Apples was nominated by Black Warrior for inclusion in the 2007 Pushcart Anthology, and it was reproduced on Verse Daily. She is currently writing a dissertation on contemporary American women’s poetry for the PhD in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Oregon.




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