Anne Higgins
teaches English and Theology at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. She is a member of the Daughters of Charity.
She has had about ninety poems published, in Yankee, Commonweal, Spirituality and Health, The Melic Review, The Centrifugal Eye, and a variety of small magazines.
Her first book of poetry, At the Year’s Elbow, was published by the Mellen Poetry Press in 2000, and republished by Wipf and Stock in 2006. Her second book of poetry, Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, was published by Plain View Press in 2007, and her third, a chapbook called Pick It Up and Read, is being published now by Finishing Line Press.
Her poem,“The Daruma Doll,” was published in Letters to the World-Poems from the WOM-PO Listserv, in 2008.
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Six
Sides to my story:
hidden fruits of the Holy Spirit,
sweet and delicious as raspberries.
Half of the Apostles—Half of the Tribes—
which ones?
Desks in the rows of my fifth grade classroom,
bedrooms in the house in Windsor Hills
whose trees I loved.
Lily bulbs now in the earth,
silently stretching their ghostly roots.
Peanut butter crackers in the pack I
gave my father,
who no longer has eyes for them.
Cans of Rolling Rock in their dangerous
plastic bracelets,
Pence,
no longer in use,
but pensive all the same.
The hue of my shoe
“..scientists at the University of Arizona found, on a sampling of 26 shoes worn by test subjects for three months or longer: bacteria that cause blood infections, unrinary tract and wound infections, intestinal tract infections... which the subjects tracked into the carpets and flooring of their homes...”—Baltimore Sun 5/6/08
Today with new eyes I viewed
black rubber on the soles of my shoes
carrying constellations of Klebsiella pneumoniae,
condominiums of pseudomonas luteola,
whole civilizations of E. coli.
The smooth black of my soles
absorbs the other colors:
the hue of robin guano,
squashed earthworm,
powdered mulch,
dust of chlorine and cholera
from all the floors of all the public toilets
of ten years of voiding.
I heard my mother saying that
you had to eat a peck of dirt before you die.
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