Anne Noble (she/her) joined our program as a fiction writer in Fall ‘21. She is working on a novel that is the fictionalized story of a mother and daughter, choices we make about love, which can seem safe but pan out badly, and the love stories we leave behind that we always long for. Anne lives in Hawaii. She came to our program with an extensive background in art and design. She loves multi-genre and cross-media works.

This
for Lani

This morning cup of coffee,
this adoring pup,
this screaming of roosters.

This bone and skin,
this moment with a friend,
this lifetime with the other half
of my heart.

This movement of your pen
across paper,
this wash of green
from your brush
your words
sketched.

Will you come back
and haunt me,
I ask.
No, you say.
No need.

So much of you
is woven through my life.
So much of you
steeped into the
threads of it.
This bit of silk.

It’s all so temporary,
this.

Art: Anne Noble, detail of Map of Creative Self, from MFA course Literature & the Self

Hag Hair

The gift of mid-sixties
Hag hair
Like thin, frizzy wisps of cloud
Stretched over Mauna Kea

Road maps
Around my eyes
Mark wonderings
And temporary dwellings

The skin
On my shoulders
Taut like balloons
The one place where nothing sags

My heart is burst open
Like a watermelon
Pink and juicy
Where things flow freely
Now, thank God

Once upon a time
There was a waist
Given way to ice cream
And sourdough bread
The way the earth gives way
To rain in a mudslide

Hips spread like a Texas ranch
Void of cowboys

No butter for the popcorn in my knees

And feet like slabs of slate
I no longer recognize
They must belong
To Fred Flintstone

No fun to leave
A good-looking corpse
Like a box of paints untouched

Loyal and faithful friends
These parts
This runaway stagecoach
Of my soul

“Hag Hair” has been published in in Hags on Fire, Issue 5.
You can read the poem in the magazine here.

Literary Theory Comic by Annie: Postcolonial Criticism

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