My mother worries one
bone in her body like the wind
warps a grain field. It is the glowing
metal rod in her left shin — the poetry
dowsing rod. At night she sleeps still
and the rod points up to her blood-
pumping heart, twice out, years long
to work, still — and glows blue slant
into her poetry, weighing her heart
with dull, floating blue chrome,
brightening her eyes with song and,
yes, more life.
Anna Laura Falvey (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based poet and theater-maker. In 2020, she graduated from Bard College with degrees in Classics & Written Arts, with a specialty in Ancient Greek tragedy and poetry. She spent her college career blissfully hidden behind the Circulation and Reference desks at the Stevenson Library, where she worked. Anna Laura has been a teaching artist with Artists Striving to End Poverty since 2019, with Lumina Theatre Company since 2021, and will begin a teaching fellowship with ArtistYear in January of 2022. She currently works as editorial assistant at Bellevue Literary Review, and is currently serving as an ArtistYear fellow, teaching Poetry in Queens, NY.