Poetry By Annmarie Lockhart

      Peter Alfred Hess Flickr


​See-Through

You run your finger along the blue
line on the inside of my wrist, the 
oxygenated iron that steels me. 
Feel my history, read my stars.
Look at me.

My lips linger on the pulse
beat, beat, beating in your neck.
I can taste your infrastructure, 
the calcium and sea water that held
you together, then and now. Look at me.

It was a dry heat. It was an ice storm.
It was a sirocco. It was a monsoon.
It was a long time ago. It is now.

Tap me a tattoo, an incantation
to ward off shadows and specters. 
Sing me our secret song, offer it up to 
the ceaseless rain. Leave moonlight til
morning. Look at me. See me the way 
I see you.



An Angle on Atlantic City in January

The glare might lead you to believe in the monochrome absolutism of the landscape but do not fall for the ruse. Look closer.

Blue speaks for the shadows and 
black sharpens the edges. 
Orange squeezes the juice from the weak sun. 
Brown stamps the grain of years into wood and mud.
Gray smears the clouds and
green deeps the chop on the water. 

We don’t rest on benches. We gather, random crystals that bump and fit. We know the intimacy of snow flakes and sand grains. We pile in dunes and drifts. We wade this perfect shore.  ​

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to poetry, and Unbound Content, an independent poetry press. A lifelong resident of Englewood, New Jersey, she lives, writes, and works two miles from the hospital where she was born. You can read her words at fine journals online and in print.

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