Friday, May 29, 2026: Ann Tweedy's "By the river"

 By the river,

hanging my camera on the plank

of an Adirondack chair. Wading in the cold

flow–shallow, bed of smooth rocks,

slippery and hard on the soles of my feet.

Turning out of the water to a sheltered pool–tiny fish

swimming there. Almost like tadpoles but so small.

A centimeter to an inch.

Squatting by clumps of grass that formed

the pool’s barrier and staring in. Getting up, a sense of someone

watching me from behind--at the river shore. I turn and

a surprised woodchuck, large and beaver-like but with a thin tail, stares back.

It kept its eyes locked with mine as it moved

haltingly upland. Meanwhile I inched toward my camera,

keeping myself in our eye-lock.

As I got close, my toe stubbed hard on the wood chair,

the small one next to the pinky. I felt the stab but mostly was glad

to be within reach of the camera--grabbed it and proceeded

to snap. The woodchuck’s serious and cautious gaze

caught in my aperture, face with its mix of brown and black.

The rounded oval back. Alert squirrel stance.

When it was over, the woodchuck up in the grass and trees,

beyond my sight path, I noticed that my toe was blooming purple,

felt the pain it took to walk. Picture-replay revealed my camera

had been accidentally set to “effects”–photos

a mash of painting and cartoon, contrasts in color

overdone, too much black at the muzzle, the intelligence of the eyes

lost. Scathed by eagerness but left

with fascination. Those moments

looking into its eyes, the lens

our mediator, rivet my days.

 © Ann Tweedy

Ann Tweedy’s first full-length book, The Body’s Alphabet (Headmistress Press), earned a Bisexual Book Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks: Beleaguered Oases (2 nd ed. Seven Kitchens), White Out (Green Fuse Poetic Arts), and A Registry of Survival (Last Word Press). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and many other places, and she has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and five Best of the Net Awards. A law professor by day, Ann has devoted her career to serving Native Tribes. She recently left the University of South Dakota School of Law for a position at University of Mississippi School of Law. Read more at

www.anntweedy.com.

Saturday, September 27, 2025: Ann Tweedy's "Chimera"

 Chimera

Stryge flew when the cathedral lit up

electrical system flashing red at some unknown juncture

five thousand miles later, she landed on my shoulder

All the days since, cancer’s voraciousness.

Two feline littermates taken at 15—one beloved, the other

a difficult genius. Friends stricken, my father killed, my uncle

ailing. I know Stryge is to blame. Anger. Terror.

Who’s next? I don’t want to know. I do want to know.

I try to stem the tide. Not this one. Not that one. Not me.

Please, I beg. Please, please, please. Leave the last cat for us,

let him go some other way. Take a break, go to bed.

Rip Van Winkle finally caught up on this sleep.

Stryge sits on my shoulder, looks out

at my loved ones, my acquaintances--with an attitude of remove.

Her wings folded, her cheeks held up by delicate hands.

I hope to one day stop crying--find peace with the

endless onslaught. Stryge watches all my surroundings, head one head-length

above mine. She is heavy and light like all the other-worldly.

My shoulder droops, then rights itself.

first published in Issue 11 of PLEXUS (2023).

© Ann Tweedy

                                                               The Chimera (1867) by Gustave Moreau

Ann Tweedy’s first full-length book, The Body’s Alphabet (Headmistress Press), earned a Bisexual Book Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks: Beleaguered Oases, White Out, and A Registry of Survival. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and many other places, and she has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and five Best of the Net Awards. A law professor by day, Ann has devoted her career to serving Native Tribes. She teaches at University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law. Read more at www.anntweedy.com.

Saturday, April 23. 2022: Ann Tweedy's poem "Sometimes"

 Sometimes 

Her ex-husband’s family put the dog down 

after she lost him in the divorce. 

I see him now guarding the youngest child, a toddler-- 

my uncle–after he fell into a ditch 

at the construction site across the street. 

The public housing they moved to wouldn’t 

take him. 

* 

My grandfather tarnished her reputation

in revenge for leaving him or to get off 

cheap in alimony and child support. 

His stories of seeing her out on dates, 

legs pressed against car windows, 

are hard to fathom now. What if everyone 

considered that each little meanness 

might be puzzled over sixty years down the line 

by his children’s children? 

* 

But she wasn’t always downtrodden-- 

resplendent in glass stones 

or enameled metal 

her soft voice almost cooed. 

Sometimes she was a politician, gushing-- 

how pretty someone looked, 

how beautiful the choir sounded-- 

getting everyone to like her.

© 2022 Ann Tweedy

Ann Tweedy's first full-length book, The Body's Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016. It earned a Bisexual Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks, Beleaguered Oases, White Out, and A Registry of Survival. Read more at www.anntweedy.com.

Women's History Month: Thursday, March 25, 2021: Ann Tweedy's Poem "Night Strains"

 

                                              image from Shutterstock

Night Strains

 

last night, the nutria in the river interrupted 

my contemplation of the swooping little brown bat’s 

jagged ellipses and riffling wings. 

i wanted to stand on the bank and watch bat skim 

until night blended her completely in. 

 

but the nutria swam a little past me, then circled back, 

slapping her tail hard as she dove, then swam further off and back again 

to the small clearing i had climbed down to, repeating herself 

until i grasped my unwelcomeness and knew-- 

looking down at my smooth, bare legs-- 

i wanted no part of any battle. so i climbed back up the dike, 

dodging blackberry brambles. 

 

today, i learn of the campaign 

to trap and euthanize nutria and how aggressively 

they bite and scratch. in my mind, the guinea pig ears 

and upturned nose ride above the current, comical profile 

unaware of the danger i might pose or knowing 

that she has the better of me. 

© 2021 ann tweedy

Ann Tweedy's first full-length book, The Body's Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016. It earned a Bisexual Book Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks: Beleaguered Oases (2nd ed. Seven Kitchens Press 2020); A Registry of Survival (Last Word Press 2020); and White Out (Green Fuse Poetic Arts 2013). She currently serves as a law professor specializing in the laws relating to Native American Tribes. Read more about her at www.anntweedy.com.

Ann Tweedy's "Beleaguered Oasis"

   

Full disclosure: the book I’m about to review was gifted to me, and is dedicated to our mutual dearly departed friend, Theresa Antonia, may she rest in peace.

    In the past 18 months, I’ve discovered, and with great pleasure, published the work of poet and human rights advocate Ann Tweedy, who, in my opinion, needs to be read by every poet and lover of poetry in the world right now. While I’m more familiar with her recent work, it was a joy to dive into her chapbook Beleaguered Oasis (© 2020), reissued by Seven Kitchen Press, as part of their ReBound Series.

    Beleaguered Oasis contains fifteen gorgeous poems, divided into three sections; The Body, Many Oases, and Immersed. Within these sections are several poems that tie together the larger theme of the work; a poet going through a journey of self-discovery, with time spent observing, or connecting to nature, or with people, until they are is ready to take up the journey again. Each poem is highly detailed, both in narrative and tone, and at the same time, accessable. 

    The lyrical and compact quality of the poems in Beleaguered Oasis are what make it an unforgettable gem. Tweedy’s greatest skill, as a poet, shines through every piece, especially in the poem “Lit Rooms”:

It’s night and the small tan moth

presses wings to pane,

enchanted by my light. Above her

the spider who’s spun

along the frame waits.

Did the spider, spinning, dream

of moth-juice, knowing light 

would draw one? And who

besides a moth can decipher

the call of incandescence-

whether the promise of nectar

or a moonbeam’s guidance?

Some posit she hovers

in a daze to let her eyes

reorient to darkness. But those

who gaze from lit rooms

watch light pull her and discern

the outlines of a why no smaller or bigger

than the why of any desire that pulses-

unknowing, unknowable-through us.

© 2020 Ann Tweedy

   Beleaguered Oasis gives the reader the opportunity to experience, and enjoy Tweedy, as a poet, on a different level. There are poets who will reissue, or republish, the same set of poems in a work they consider seminal, and more likely, sentimental, for a time they hit the mark. There are poets who will refuse to reissue/republish earlier work, as a way to exert control, and to satisfy their ego. Tweedy is neither one of these, and Beleaguered Oasis is a testament to the poet she started out as, and who she will ultimately become. 

Beleaguered Oasis, © 2020 Ann Tweedy, Seven Kitchens Press (https://sevenkitchenspress.com), 21 pages, ISBN 978-1-949333-64-0, $9.00

© 2020 marie c lecrivain

Thursday, March 26, 2020: National Women's Month: Ann Tweedy's poem "Face Value”

Face Value 

When my younger sister said our father didn’t love us, 

I paused. To struggle for decades 

with whether I am lovable. And not know. To see him 

as part of that story, his being there but not 

when you needed him most, his willingness 

to sell me, the non-custodial daughter, out. 

Something to prove to his wife 

about devotion, the degrees love flows in. 

But when my sister said he didn’t love us 

I could see I’d taken love as given. The weak 

love, the undefended love, the second-best love. 

And I thought of the places 

he’d taken me–especially as a young child, 

an elementary school kid. The swimming holes, 

beaches in Massachusetts and Maine-- 

Horseneck with its plovers and undertow 

and rumors of horseshoe crabs and actual biting horseflies. 

Nantucket once with my grandma–we left early in the morning-- 

I slept in the car on the way and when we got there, 

in the shops, studied pictures of gulls on grey 

posts in the water. When I was a little older 

he’d take me and a friend to an annual Masonic festival– 

hot dogs and booths with games and friendly people wandering the grounds-- 

until he remarried–and like the women who became chattel 

upon marrying one hundred and fifty years ago–no longer could. 

So I’m going with love–those long-ago outings I visit to feel it, 

how he says the words, especially if you say them first.

© 2020 Ann Tweedy

Bio: Ann Tweedy's first full length book, The Body's Alphabet, was published by

Headmistress Press an earned a Bisexual Book Award in Poetry and was also a

finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Society

Award.  She also has published two chapbooks, the first of which is being reissued

by Seven Kitchens Press later this year. Her hybrid chapbook, A Registry of Survival,

is also forthcoming from Last Word Press.  An attorney by day, she has devoted

her career to serving Native Tribes, and she recently moved from Washington

to South Dakota to join the faculty at University of South Dakota School of Law.

Women's History Month: Ann Tweedy's "A Journey"

A JOURNEY 

The key knows the darkness 
of the lock, the tightness 
of metal walls against it. 
It knows that sometimes its points 
don’t match the notches--
 it knows paralysis. And it knows the click 
of points that marks permission. 

The key knows it is only one piece
of any puzzle. 

It knows the grip of a woman’s
 hand as she walks around in the dark,
 pointing it like a gun, and also 
the warm loneliness of a pocket. 

The key is not indifferent,
but it is at peace with its powerlessness. 

The key remembers how it was 
to be part of the nowhere 
and everywhere of the Earth. 

They key remembers the blades
 of shovels, the knife-points of drills, 
the tremors of dynamite
 that finally came for it. 

The key remembers being pried 
and then heated until it pooled 
and shimmered. The key remembers 
the sudden tightness of the cast 
and how the freedom of movement 
drained from it.

© 2019 Ann Tweedy




Ann Tweedy's first full length book, The Body's Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016 and was awarded a Bisexual Book Award in poetry and a Human Relations Indie Book Award.  It was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Society Award.  She also has published two chapbooks, and her poetry has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Rattle, literary mama, and elsewhere. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has also been nominated for a Bet of the Net Award.  Ann holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. Originally from Massachusetts, she has lived in many places in the Midwest and on the West Coast.  She currently makes her home in Washington State, where she works as in-house attorney for the Muckleshoot Tribe.  You can read more about her at www.anntweedy.com.