"Maybe I’m a satellite": Aka Annie by Holly Anderson

Aka Annie* by Holly Anderson

So    now
I take the car service way out there for what?
To THE Bronx? What is that anyway?
Some wrong turn a Dutchman took?
It’s all gone. None of it is
here: Fulton cobbles dipped in pewter, the shitting,
shrieking gulls
wearing their necklaces of fish guts and dawn-tinted tiaras.
This new joint looks like an airport.
The sweet sweet reek and bladderwrack all gone.   All gone.
Some of those weisenheimers always called out ‘Nice rack, Annie’
my buoyant my
bouncing clouds of joy       Oh!
how the boys enjoyed the chest that some god somewhere
gave me to share
joyfully with all the world. All gone.
A bit of luck for the really young ones now.
A floppy bit of rest for me old market boyos.
Game over.
Nothing left to sell.
Better to bundle these riddled bones and storied skin
mottled blue and tallow yellow, red bursts and pin dots. What the hell happened to the queenly scroll of vellum that men pored over, studied and adored?
so I just watch wonder
and wait now for warmth to find me    again.
Tucked up in a tidy corner with some busted flat, waxed boxes underfoot
and a tower of clean crates at my back.
Dozing.   Nothing left to sell.
I’m happy to sleep. When I sleep I can fly. Not so dramatic that
just    me running    hard
running full-out down a lake road    sun-blistered and so
much hair   where is that hair now?
The way it wagged like a tail   like a curtain   like water tumbling over rocks
my mouth laughing the panting   he is chasing my fine frame wanting me again wanting to worship at my freckled altar
but    I’m always running   hard          and then
and then I’m lifting off     tanned legs bicycling over spruce tops far
far beneath the skittish clouds    and I can read all the
alphabets of pine pitch birds bottle green and blue sky symbols.
Flying             high    where it’s clear and it’s cold as pack ice.
Where it’s polar. Where it’s quiet. It’s so quiet.
Maybe I’m a satellite.

Audio file is here

Courtesy: The Poet

AKA Annie* by Holly Anderson inspired by a New York Times article about Gloria Wasserman’s storied life dated Oct. 10, 2010. Ms. Wasserman was best known for her work at the Fulton Fish Market where she spent 35 years selling newspapers and cigarettes and earning the nickname “South Street Annie.”

AKA Annie* by Holly Anderson was posted yesterday at the deliciously named 'qarrtsiluni' which is an Iñupiaq word that means “sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst.”
Qarrtsiluni is an online literary community that remains open to inspired amateurs as well as to seasoned, full-time writersoffers electronic delivery of original poetry, prose, and art, organized into regular, themed issues, with a new post every weekday.

Poet, performer Holly Anderson met Mission of Burma when she and they were taking their work in new directions and to wider audiences. Her poems were coming off telephone poles and into publication, and their music was about to be recorded for first releases. One of Holly's poems, “White Story,” became an emotional high point in Burma sets as Clint Conley’s song, Mica.

Holly Anderson's poetry and prose has been anthologized in Up is Up, But So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992 (NYU Press), The Unbearables (Autonomedia), and First Person Intense (Mudborn Press). Her limited edition books Lily Lou (Purgatory Pie Press) and Sheherezade (Pyramid Atlantic) are in library collections including MOMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Anderson's lyrics can be heard on Consonant (s/t) + Love and Affliction (Fenwayrecordings) Mission of Burma's VS + OnoffOn + The Sound, the Speed, the Light (Matador), Jonathan Kane's Jet Ear Party (Table of the Elements/Radium), and forthcoming on Peg Simone's Secrets From the Storm (Radium).

Some of Holly Anderson’s recent work can be heard on Peg Simone’s 2010 record Secrets From the Storm (Table of the Elements/Radium). Forthcoming in 2011: ‘The Night She Slept With A Bear,’ a collection of flash fictions and mesostics shipping with an original soundtrack by Chris Brokaw from Publication Studio in Portland OR.