Ann Pedone
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Day Twelve (Or an Ars Poetica)
Today is the day when there’s a website that lists every
presidential hard-on, every time a woman in any one of
four American metropolitan cities is cat-called, a brief
history of man on plant pornography, the exact time
when any river “swells”, every time a poet gives up
writing because they just can’t afford it any more, every
time a woman’s tongue almost reaches a man’s asshole,
every time someone says “pussy” but actually means
“eternity”, every time a word in the English language
that has been exactly the same since the fifteenth century,
suddenly, and inexplicably, changes, every time someone
confuses decay with art, every time a woman tries to get
into a crowded elevator in the least feminine way possible,
every time you go down on me and the phrase “nation
building” is right there on the tip of your tongue, every time
I wish I had studied physics in school, so I would know the
true origin of all of this heat
Ann is a poet, non-fiction writer, and literary translator. She is the author of The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53), as well as numerous chapbooks. Her work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, the Dialogist, Barrow Street, 2River, Tupelo Quarterly, The Texas Review, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. Ann has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared as Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week”. She graduated from Bard College and has a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Berkeley.