Anne Elezabeth Pluto grew up in Brooklyn, NY before it was cool. She is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. A member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s, she is one of the founders and editors at Nixes Mate Review and Nixes Mate Books. She has two full-length collections The Deepest Part of Dark, Unlikely Stories Press, NOLA (2020), and How Many Miles to Babylon? Lily Books, (2023) and a third one scheduled to come out this fall – You Offered Me Your Horses (Lily Books).

Homecoming (20)

When I would return,
home was a smashed
mouth. Everything is silent
pre-dawn and giant.
Center of recall – how
every object would transmit
a story if it was held fast
and tight – bound across
the heart with wire – searing
pain and probing fire
no gun – no bullet hole
in one center – but the moon
rising from the kitchen window
an eye peering through a blind
as if she were invisible-
did the moon see my chest pulled
taut and pierced with barbed wire –
did she see the silver coffeepot—
on the stove—
brilliant in her light?

The Return of the Beloved (29)

This is how you come
forthright – a phone call
always at 5-year intervals

and I, can feel your heart
across the map, each state
arriving as we both remember
what it was like to know
the world inside the other

Now over 20 years
I know the silence too
the wait and the silvered
disappointment – each parting
another sorrowful adventure
and the truth we both
lived to discover – a list of what
we never did together
no beaches, no vacations,
no concerts, no ballet,
no gifts on a birthday,
no flowers.
You said you didn’t think
I was that kind of woman.
What could I do but laugh.

I see you still—young—handsome—feral
lost in my kitchen the only time
I cooked a meal for you—and how
we both turned at the same moment
to discover we had never felt
this before.

Two Ghosts for the New Year (33)

Easy to resurrect the dead – through
the wire – the elusive Ethernet – the dead
crave electricity need energy to return
Resourceful Odysseus gave his blood
to dead Achilles
for conversation – love to love – solider to
another soldier – for me it is much simpler – no
blood given for another girl
who loved you and put your photograph in an album
for the sake of curiosity – I looked never
thinking- nor even in memory that you would appear
there – caught grainy young – no more than 17
turned to face a camera faded now 37 years ago
but I can make it feel like yesterday – some pain is so
perfect that it lives forever – a pinprick to stir
the blood I never gave for you either – never cut but
burned – betrayal is transfiguration – I used to
believe I had forgiven you – but given
the chance I cursed you backwards – into silence.

I have asked you to forgive me. You for whom this heart
molded as a boy – the exchange of love
so complete that all my decisions
decades later came
from that first break
the distance only
made me want to live. You tried suicide
twice – the ghost of a boy in the photograph –
Happy New Year – the second ghost the man
I didn’t marry – now engaged – in the photos
he finally aged – and then aged again
unbound by tradition – a legacy to himself
I can remember and then, and then
forget.

In My Church, Mary Wears Red (28)

The Moscow Patriarch had repeatedly bestowed blessings on the Russian military, giving a historical golden icon of the Virgin Mary to a senior commander, for example, and casting the war as a holy struggle to protect Russia from what he called Western scourges like gay pride parades. He has been a vocal supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin, with the church receiving vast financial resources in return.
Neil MacFarquhar and Sophia Kishkovsky
New York Times April 18, 2022

Let’s take Her out of the picture.
Out of the historical golden frame
where She wouldn’t stand
for being in the pocket of a general
scourge – the cold eastern blame
of the west. She sees the exchange
of gold and gems – what those who
do not have eternal life see fit
to deal with – let’s take Her out
of this picture – She’s left on a train
to the sea – She’s standing in the graves
found in Bucha – She’s wandering in
the steel plant in Mariupol – this Holy
Week – this Passover feast – this month
of fasting – She’s covering her hair – her face –
She’s opening her hands and reading
the central list of the dead – She’s
stepping into the Chorne more *
swimming mermaid like her red garments
trailing the fishes and every broken mother’s
wishes to pull the dead sailors to shore
in militias – to show – to show – their weeping
mothers – their blinded criminal country the cost
of lies – the cost of lives – and She rises
Venus like from the sea – Stella Maris –
Theotokos** – Mother of Jesus – announcing
the resurrection in this, the cruelest month
of the year.