top of page
Pedone.jpg

From: While Marie

Ann Pedone

That video where that woman opens    up her 

cunt so wide that
 

she can pull the whole animal
 

length of language    straight out       and it is the most 

beautiful cunt in the western             hemisphere 

while           Marie I never kept a 

diary when I was a kid         Never learned how to ski or 

hunt        Everything happens to me      blue as a kite 












 

Lifting a case of non-dairy creamer into the 

back of my car                       and yet


still so far away           from being


fluent in porcelain fellatio           while Marie is 

in the back getting          turned on by 

satellites, spiritual                things and extremely


large industrial fishing boats 















 

Describe for me in as much           detail as you 

can a brand                    new family farm just 

outside of Minneapolis                  there are many, many


reasons why          while                      Marie I prefer


being         sedated whenever


I have my stomach pumped                               During


the sacred process of


grinding beef                       so much confessional 

poetry is             inevitably                  made 












 

Even though you have always been an              introvert 

thinker you                      waited for me out on the drive 

way with a saucepan


full of chopped eggplant               your pupils 

dilated         almost             pastoral like the


idea of heat being trapped                             in a very


small room with all the lights out is not                      sweet


while Marie             coming to love my


seven blessed children even                when they are unruly 

harvesting bright               gigantic               chorus 











 

It goes without saying that            when I am 

older I will know much


more about sheep


I might have a pair of sturdy boots and the sex 

drive to match which is                   the way economics has


always worked                                         In case


you run out of salt for                               your eggs you can always


call me                           There are paperclips in the 

drawer and extra cans of                     tomato 

sauce while Marie                           three gallons of 

brightest milk                                          makes snowbirds 

Ann Pedone is a poet and translator in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of The Medea Notebooks (spring, 2023 Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife, winner of the 2022 Press 53 Award for Poetry, as well as the chapbooks The Bird Happened; perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho; Everywhere You Put Your Mouth; Sea [break]; and DREAM/WORK. Her work has recently appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Narrative, Chicago Quarterly Review, Carve Magazine, Conduit, and Best American Poetry blog.

bottom of page