January 2022
Bio Note: My most recent poetry collection is Outside From the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020), and my most recent chapbook is Escaping Lee Miller (Ethel Zine and Micro Press, 2021). My first appearance in Verse-Virtual was in 2018.
Off the Grid
Will death come like blackness
came to my computer screen?
It went dark and wouldn’t turn back on.
Like CPR on a heart patient,
I tried codes to restart it.
Briefly it came on, sputtered,
then went black again.
In the morning, it wouldn’t wake up.
When I die, I would like to disappear
into the surrounding silence,
but there is the problem of the body.
It doesn't disappear. It fails.
I am my body, but am I inextricable
from my body? I imagine my release,
invisible in the intersecting circles
of two hawks overhead.
I feel soft breezes,
and all that blows through me
is tinged with that mystery.
©2022 Anne Whitehouse
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