Sample Poems by Anne Harding Woodworth

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After the CT Scan

I asked Mike the technician
if he’d actually seen my brain.

Yes, he said. Which was comfort to me.
But I wanted to know more.

Had Mike, by any chance, seen poems in there—
you know, poems circulating wildly, eager to get out?

Words, I said, like random particles, no, participles,
strings of words floating, a few rhyming in my skull,

bouncing off bone over-within-around lobes,
cortexes, gray matter, trying to free themselves?

Mike looked at me in that odd way
dedicated but uninterested people have

who worry they might not be getting
the gist of something, a deeper meaning

perhaps. Or was he so confident in this,
the age of technology, that he was asking himself,

did this old girl really believe
there are poems to be seen in a CT scan,

poems that travel aimlessly inside a brain?

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X-Ray Film, 2009
Cedar Mountain, North Carolina

Near where lattice-stemmed mushrooms bloom,
x-ray film was buried in a baseball diamond,

sunk in haste when the film factory closed
and the company baseball teams folded.

Men had played ball for relief from the stress of chemistry,
cellulose triacetate in their nostrils, and forklifts,

until the fear of job loss became a malignancy
under a thousand ribcages and spines.

The film has bubbled up to the surface
because Earth spits back what tries to poison it.

And the film is exposed now in the forest light,
lying in pieces, small and large rectangles,

blue, gray, opaque, some transparent, spreading out
useless over first base and left field, reminders

of sickness in the human gut, the possibility
of insight into the workings of a thing gone wrong.

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Ouroboros: Dance Me Full Circle

Aw, c’mon,
I know I’m a talker,
but dance me, won’t you?

I know my maw’s open
all the time, but—aw, c’mon—
you can fill it, tail.

Dance me, won’t you?—
swing time at sunset with music, 
just you and me

a full circle, closing ranks
like a morning glory at night.
Aw, c’mon. Let’s dance. 

Dance me when it’s dark. Twirl me,
won’t you?—when it’s dark
and dance is aching to go ’round.

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Entrée d’Apollon
as performed by a Baroque dancer

His hands are weightless
in a Sistine Chapel kind-of-way
but raised high above his head, and low.

He is dancing to Jean-Baptiste Lully.
He listens for the violins.
His torso is strong and arched.

No ruffles at his neck. No dyed curls.
No red high-heeled shoes. No lace.
His eyes behind the mask of Apollo

see with luster, as we watch.
His feet swoop, left outward, inward,
right outward. His left foot jiggles,

swoops into gurgling chaos
from the ankle. Now his right foot
goes into ankle frenzy, ankle shake,

ankle laughter, and the sun god smiles.
He turns, as sun enters through the clerestory.
His feet swoop, right inward,

left outward again. Louis quatorze,
you are the dancer now, and the dancer
is you. You are unseen gold brocade.

You are flare, sun-flare, sun-king
in a black cotton T-shirt.