Ann Bracken

Ann Bracken is the consummate artist. She is a poet, visual artist, and the most creative teacher you will ever find. She brings the arts together wherever she walks; and whether writing a book of poems, or designing and sewing a new fashion, it is all the same. The muses fly around her chanting and chanting, go on, go on. We believe in you. And so we present poems because we believe in her too. —Grace Cavalieri

Ann Bracken is an educator and writer whose poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in the Little Patuxent Review, Reckless Writing Anthology: Emerging Poets of the 21st Century, Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems, Praxilla, New Verse News, Scribble, The Museletter, and The Gunpowder Review. Ann’s poem, “Mrs. S” was nominated for a 2014 Pushcart Prize. In addition to teaching professional writing at the University of Maryland, College Park and working as a poet in the schools, Ann serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review and presents frequently at writing and creativity conferences, including Mindcamp of Toronto, Florida Creativity, the Maryland Writers’ Association, the Association of Independent Maryland Schools, and The Creative Problem Solving Institute.

Mrs. S

by Ann Bracken

Nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize

No one ever tells the story

of Mrs. Sisyphus

perhaps because she

endures at the bottom

of the hill

with all the little boulders

tumbling from above.

In between the spinning of cloth

and the baking of bread,

she rolls the children out the door

to play and rolls the food

home from the market.

Day after day

she jostles the water jugs

from well to domicile

and back.

She nudges and cajoles the

bigger boulders of animals

from pasture to barn

and finally to slaughter.

Preparing feasts

for all the Baby Sisiphi

who gather around the table

whining, When is Daddy coming home?

Published in Reckless Writing Anthology: The Modernization of Poetry by Emerging Writers of the 21st Century

Value Added Teachers

She feels frustrated

As she rumbles around in cramped offices

with all the people shouting

Words don’t matter.

Especially when she hears graduates

of the university

referred to as output.

When people become output

there is no need for nurture.

Sewage pipes have output,

as do factories that churn out row after row

of standardized parts.

In cramped classrooms and windowless lecture halls

teachers are gauged by their productivity

here every human complexity is reduced

to a series of data points, quantified and measured

Success or failure—positive or negative output.

These days she no longer relishes

seeing joy or surprise or the flash

of an ah-ha moment on her students’ faces.

Instead of planning for a field-trip to the meadow

for a sensory experience,

she spends time trying to quantify

commitment, measure amazement

and determine a cut score for

how much inspiration one needs

for a journey into the unknown.

More Rock Than Bach

She’s more rock than Bach

Gives her age as the right side of 50,

still cruises to “Satisfaction,”

and grooves to “My Girl” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

Knows her music trivia---

toddling around on the day the music died,

learned to twist before she could multiply,

still knows every song on the Beatle’s White Album.

“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” got her up and ready for school

had a boyfriend who went to Woodstock—What’s that?

she said, and then climbed

into the backseat of a ’68 Mustang,

and made out to “Light My Fire.”

She left her plaid skirt and saddle shoes

somewhere between “Close to You”

and “Instant Karma” then started college—

dazed and confused—“One Toke Over the Line”

in the midst of a worldwide “Revolution.”

She was a kid who knew about Bull Connor,

Civil Rights, assassinations, Kent State killings,

Napalm, and Buddhist immolations. A witness

to society’s “Evil Ways” --- knows “You Can’t Always

Get What You Want.”

Haunted by history, and “Time in a Bottle,”

she’s still more rock than Bach,

wakes up to “Good Vibrations”

finds herself wishing “Give Me Just a Little More Time.”

Ann Bracken, June, 2012

Based on an article in Spiegel Online ?Dreams in Infrared? by Nicola Abe

A Day in the Life of a Drone Pilot

He works in a windowless, air-conditioned container somewhere in New Mexico.

The pilot and his co-workers sit in front of fourteen computer monitors

and four keyboards.

Drone pilots at work.

The container is the cockpit where no one flies. They sit at controls

watching the Predator drone circle in figure eights

high above Afghanistan,

6,250 miles away.

The pilot sees a house made of mud

and a shed used to house goats comes into focus in the crosshairs.

He receives an order to fire and presses the button with his left hand.

Then he marks the roof with a laser.

The pilot next to him

pulls the trigger.

Releases a hellfire missile.

Sixteen seconds to impact.

The moments freeze, ticking by in slow motion.

The pilot can still divert the missile.

No one is on the ground. Three seconds to impact.

A child walks around the corner of the goat shed.

Second zero.The pilot’s digital world collides with the village

between Baghan and Mazar-e-Sharif.

The pilot sees a flash on the screen.

The explosion

the building collapses

the child disappears.

The pilot’s stomach plunges.

Did we just kill a kid? he asks the pilot next to him.

Yes, I guess it was a kid.

“Was it a kid?” they write in a computer chat window.

Someone they don’t know answers.

Someone sitting in a military command center.

Someone far away who observed the attack.

“No, that was a dog.”

In the Second Chance Café

the reedy blues of Benny Goodman’s “Just in Time”

stream from the glowing Wurlitzer.

Candle flames like couriers of loss

conjure specters.

Mark, brown fedora shading his eyes,

stares into an amber Manhattan

longing to resurrect a lost lover

who carved her initials

in the side car of his heart.

Helen in faded rose silk

sifts through memories, a soundless rhapsody.

She hears footsteps,

imagines her man’s hand warm on the small of her back.

Icebergs of pain dissolve

as Mark crosses the ghost ship of a dance floor

smiles at Helen, offers his hand.

Ready to risk again.

Helen remembers the shimmer

of the possible. She moves easily into his arms

as they foxtrot backwards

step, step, quick step

one more dance.

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Comments

Janice F Booth (not verified)

Fri, 11/17/2023 - 5:48pm

I so admire your balancing humor and serious insights, Ann. Mrs. S and her Baby Sisiphi... so powerful! "More Rock Than Bach" had me at "... learned to twist before she multiplied" .