Hanna Andrews

from Arcana


I. The Magician


The night the chorus appeared & 
the light lay a white path across

the water's surface. Folded
into future lucid dreams where

I let go my hand, fixed outward
toward the illuminated lane, cloaked,

enclosed, & matched the chant
until the only voice was mine. 

limestone seawall
madonna della strada

I've written this a million times
& can't summon the cruelty

to get it right. You, low in the
loam. Something like endlessly.

 

XX. Judgment


My dreams saw a man misreading My Life
by Water, so I left it there, the whole error
year. Woke to strip the shelves, pack books
into suitcases. Renee in the doorway saying
this is the bridge where your selves have met
The idea of fairness falling away. There is a
kind of distance that lessens bent under the sun
shelter at Coney Island, becoming familiar with
the sound of my voice in the morning. The way
you changes shape & color, is a specificity,
a whole direction. I'm sorry I took so long.

 

XXI. The World

& one night the world will have changed. The where is sonar, the blip inside you when a friend calls Montana Big Sky country. The way hope is an opening & you locate yourself in the airport causeway listening to the one calming song that balms the ascent over & over even when the engines begin to drown it. When you get stuck in Durango, a family will pick you up in town & fix your car on a Sunday. When you circle back home from Independence Pass, the birds may crest over the rolling hills & spread overhead before aiming toward the horizon. Snow will blank your city for days & you will see nothing but the yellow cathedral light on the hill & the staggered roof antennae, which look like ships' masts dividing the sky. & one morning everyone will leave their apartments wearing International Klein Blue & every street will be lined with tiny round cocktail tables & inside the bartenders will hammer giant blocks of ice with wooden mallets for caipirinhas. & you will second guess it all & ask to be saved. You will be saved. You will draw the right cards the seer will tell you there is nothing left to do but be where you are. You will learn joy from one who can teach it. You will focus on the rippling Aurora city lights as you push a daughter into existence. Cups, cups, cups, six of wands, the world. But first, you will board the plane.

Hanna Andrews is the author of Slope Move (Coconut Books, 2013) and the co-founder and Editor of the feminist press Switchback Books. She has formerly served as Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets, and  holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in CutBank, DIAGRAM, Everyday Genius, and other journals, and she is currently a doctoral student and Black Mountain Institute Fellow in Poetry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

 
 

More from Vol. 33, Issue 1