Anna’s Lament
And all at once a strange idea came to her: what if he had
ceased to love her? Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
To swim under iron and count,
each day, the ways I am alone.
No matter his touch, or not,
no matter silence to my words.
My nature, coreopsis,
coreopsis in a world of stone.
Too soon depleted, I choke on
dried petals, drink morphine.
Who knows such wounds,
ignominy and a lost son?
Wooden ties taunt, “What for?”
and promise something new.
I drop the red bag, drown my
sullied body in an iron sea.
—by Wendy Vergoz
Bio: Wendy Vergoz is an assistant professor of English at Marian University. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century and Anglican Theological Review, and her poem "Unfinished, A Found Poem," written after 9/11, was read on the first anniversary of the attacks at churches in five different states. Vergoz participated in “Arts Kaleidoscope: Art, Poems, and Videos,” an exhibition of visual art and ekphrastic poems at Gallery 308 in Muncie, Indiana.