Poetry by Anne Graue

​Do Not Resuscitate
 
You will want to, but don’t.
Guilt is a gritted stone caught
in a sieve along with life’s leftovers--
I can drag it all behind me.
 
Open the just-in-case Word
doc so you know what I want.
Delete my Facebook page, my
Twitter and Instagram accounts.
 
Plant geraniums and sunflowers
and tulips wherever you live,
a begonia or rose bush if you have
room and need something to tend.
 
Burn all of the notebooks—listen
to the songs on my birthday playlist.
 
 
 

 
the heart itself
 
not an ache
but an undoing
of all that went before
 
the baseball games
the Sunday drives
ending up at Velvet Freeze
 
for cherry phosphates
sugar cones and dips
of mint chocolate chip
 
the smell of cut
Zoysia grass
the gathering sawdust
 
in the garage
the wood never painted
the smell never lifted
 
the coffee can
fashioned to hold
cigarettes that sported
 
red warning lines
marking where
to stop
 
to tamp the rest
to save the lungs
to staunch and slow
 
the years apart

​

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter, and has poetry appearing in SWWIM Every Day, The Plath Poetry Project, Rivet Journal, Mom Egg Review, and Into the Void and in numerous print anthologies. Her reviews have been published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Whale Road Review, The Rumpus, New Pages, and Asitoughttobemagazine.com.

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