Annie Neugebauer

I’m still celebrating National Poetry Month by reprinting a few of my published poems here. It’s a great way for me to share more of my work for free, and who doesn’t need new poems in their life?

“Something in the Attic” placed first in the 2016 Frederick J. McCarthy Memorial Award sponsored by the Poetry Society of Texas, and published in the subsequent prize anthology A Book of the Year. It’s a fun one for me. 🙂 I hope you like it!

Something in the Attic

There’s an idea nestling in the back of my mind
squirreling away materials
like a rodent in the attic –
I get only hints that it’s there:
scurrying, a vague woodsy smell.
At times, I find the mystery distracting
so I climb the ladder
and peek my head up, looking around,
but the idea has gone,
tucked tail and dived into hiding,
and the only proof I see that it was there at all
are teeth-mark nibbles on the beams, and a feeling
of recent vacancy, like a cool dent in a bed
once warmed.
What is it? I’ll find out soon enough.
For now I descend the ladder
and tuck the door up tight, listening.
But it’s only when I’ve returned to normal things
that the sound comes again,
bustling, hurrying, scurrying work
piled by small paws in a shadowed corner
to serve some later purpose,
for it is only in the dark
that animals make meaning;
it is only in the dark that new ideas thrive.

© Annie Neugebauer, 2016

Any other creatives identify with this one? I’m nearing the end of the process with the WIPbeast and have a little something rustling in the attic now…

I’m continuing my celebration of National Poetry Month by posting a poem here each week. My sonnet “Cleaning out the Exhaust Vent” won a local poetry contest and was subsequently published in the winners’ anthology Versifico. For a while it was available on the library’s blog, but since it’s gone inactive there I’m reprinting it here.

It’s fitting because my dad’s birthday is in April, and I’m always thinking about him this time of year. One of the things I carry in my memory is his scent, a mixture of things—one of which was baby powder. He used baby powder like it was going out of style. We used to tease him about it. He’d sprinkle it on after a shower, so his bathroom was always just layered with it. After he died, my brother and I sorted through his things and cleaned up the house to sell. When we got to the dust-caked exhaust fan in the bathroom ceiling, this is what happened.

Cleaning out the Exhaust Vent

We didn’t know if we should laugh or cry
when baby powder fell instead of dust—
sifted like the softest snow from the sky
and floated through the room to blanket us
in memories and smells just scarcely dead
of how, for him, the powder was a must.
You lowered the canned air from overhead
to cough out puffs of white—and I did too—
then ruffled your hair, looked at me and said
“It’s baby powder,” and almost on cue
a salty, misty film filled up our eyes
like goggles, even as our smiles grew,
and through all of the heartache and surprise,
we didn’t know if we should laugh or cry.

© Annie Neugebauer, 2016

The view out my office window keeps getting greener and greener, and I can’t get enough. (Neither can my cats, who very much enjoy the influx of food watching energetic birds and squirrels.) There really is something about the new growth that brings poetry back to the forefront of my mind. Just this morning I sat down and poured out a poem, and it’s been several months since once struck me with that kind of urgency. It’s a great feeling.

To continue my celebration of National Poetry Month, today I’m sharing a reprint of my poem “Rocking.” This one first appeared in the 2017 Texas Poetry Calendar, an annual regional favorite that I’ve been lucky enough to have several poems in. Then “Rocking” was reprinted in the 2018 edition, which was a sort of editors’ choice/best-of compilation. The 2018 calendar can be found in the Dos Gatos Press store or on Amazon for $15.95.

And now my poem can also be found here. 🙂 Enjoy!

Rocking

On the back porch
at dusk
we rock,
slightly discordant:
not synchronized,
nor alternating – not quite.

My bare toes
push off the patio table
while your thick boots
press against the ground,
and we sit
silently
in the need of so many words

that hover around us
like fat bees in the heat –
always close,
but never touching,
scenting the sweet
of our skin.

I am stung.

“I love you,”
I say quickly.

You pause your rocking
for a fraction of a moment,

smile slightly,

and resume,
the rhythm of your chair
now synced with mine.

© Annie Neugebauer, 2016

Hello, chicks and chickadees. Spring is springing here, and I’m grateful for the new green. I’m so eager I’ve even bought a few kitchen herb plants, which is a hilariously optimistic endeavor if you know how bad I am at keeping flora alive. I’m starting with a low potential kill-count of three: thyme, mint, and chives. Ah, the eternal hope of April.

April is also National Poetry Month, as you may know, which is one of my favorite things to celebrate. Over the years I’ve noted the occasion in many different ways. Since 2009 I’ve shared poems that were paired with work by artists in a really cool local collaborative exhibit called Merging Visions. I’ll have a poem for 2018 too, “Strolling in Iambic Pentameter,” but this year’s isn’t until fall. For several different years I hosted poetry-centric blog series that did everything from teach sonnet writing to share recommend poems to analyze classics line by line. They’ve all been fun, but what to do this year?

The stars have aligned, because when I looked at my list I realized I’ve developed a pretty significant backlog of poems I’ve never reprinted. My normal M.O. has been to post a poem here after it’s been out for a while elsewhere so that more people can read it—especially for poems that were published in print editions only and can’t be found online. Somehow, I’ve let 19 of them build up in my queue. Gulp! Don’t worry, email subscribers, you won’t be getting 19 posts in your inbox this month. I think one/week sounds about right. 🙂

So I’m kicking things off this week with my first one: “Dragging the Waters.” But before I get to it, below, here’s a quick snapshot of my most recent posts elsewhere that you might have missed, all at LitReactor this time:

Just click the images to visit the respective posts!

And now, this week’s poem. “Dragging the Waters” was one of my earliest publications. It appeared in Issue no. 7 of an online magazine called Phantom Kangaroo in 2011. Since the ‘roo has gone under, I think it’s high past time to have the poem posted here. It’s a strange, haunting little creature, and I hope you enjoy it!

Dragging the Waters

“Keep looking!” she screamed
over the wind.
“Keep looking!”
Panic pitched her voice so high
I almost lost it
amidst the waves crashing
just beyond our feet.

“Yeh heard ‘er!”
the bearded man bellowed
from my right.
We drag ‘em again!”
and he pulled
his corner of the net
deeper,
me and my corner
trailing with it.

© Annie Neugebauer, 2011

Thanks for reading! Join me back here for the next few weeks to read more poems. Happy National Poetry Month!