Friday, October 7, 2022: Annette Marie Smith's "Of Bells and Not Quite Death"

 

I heard that in Savannah

Georgia during the time

of the yellow fever

many victims would slip

sussurating breaths rattling like leaves

into a coma when ill.

They appeared dead and gone

and so they were carted off

to the graveyard's manicured lawn

and interred living to the hill of the dead.

Subsequently, being buried alive

became a common fear.

To allay this sensible antipathy

bodies would be laid to rest with a bell

on their grave

and that bell was connected

to their fingers with a string.

A string to ring their finger

an Ariadne gift to suss

the maze of after-seeming-death.

If the person woke from their coma

and found themselves buried alive

they could move their finger

and ring the bell

restlessly ringing their fact of non-decease.

We are bell ringers, my friends.

We are not dead yet

and the strings attached

to our fingers

thrum

with fear but also hope.

We ring our bells

from the grave

that America has become.

We have hope.

We have been interred and comatose.

But we pull the string.

We ring, we ring.

My friends,

we are not dead yet.

© 2022 Annette Marie Smith

Annette Marie Smith is an American author and poet, writing beauty in a sometime wilderness. Her books of poetry and short stories have been featured in the reading room of Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris, France. She's been nominated for the Pushcart prize and her work has ridden the trains and buses of Minnesota as broadsides through a Mcknight Foundation grant. Published internationally, her work has been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, Cherokee script, and included in The Irish Poetry Reading Archive at UCD Library. She is currently working on her first literary novel. Find out more at annettemariesmith.com

Friday, October 28, 2022: Three Works of Art by Annette Marie Smith

                                             "Leaves of a Feather"

                                           

                                                "The Woodcutter's Small Leaf Shadows"

"It's Nothing Personal"

© 2022 Annette Marie Smith

Annette Marie Smith is an American author and poet, writing beauty in a sometime wilderness. Her books of poetry and short stories have been featured in the reading room of Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris, France. She's been nominated for the Pushcart prize and her work has ridden the trains and buses of Minnesota as broadsides through a Mcknight Foundation grant. Published internationally, her work has been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, Cherokee script, and included in The Irish Poetry Reading Archive at UCD Library. She is currently working on her first literary novel. Find out more at annettemariesmith.com

Wednesday, March 11, 2020: National Women's Month: Annette Marie Smith's poem "Of Course They Got The Story Wrong"

Of Course They Got The Story Wrong

Of course they got the story wrong

painted me as tempted by an outside force

when every woman knows

that all temptation

comes from within

and is usually prompted

by curiosity and whim.

Where and when does a piece of fruit become

a metaphor

for everything that has ever been desired

and denied? And who am I to know?

At the beginning, some call it Eden, the place AND the time

and some call me Eve.

Here is the real story

or as close an approximation as you'll get

peering through the mists of myth and time.

I am a shapeshifter

and carry coils in me

of snakes to charm

as well as harm.

Sometimes I wear my snakes as long locks

and then I am called Medusa, among other things.

I am more than one woman

I am all women and I was never taken from rib or side or hide

I was already threading my way through antediluvian trees

before the man came to be.

I am snake and woman both

and am remembered so in humanity's

racial memory as Cihuacōātl, Angitia, and more.

I have worn bell skirts and bare breasts,

gleaming scales and undress

always I am the seductress

with persimmons, blood oranges, and nectar heavy peaches

up my sleeves (when I wear them).

So, about Adam. I met him first when I was going by Lilith

at which time his naivety offended me.

Later I took pity (and take note that pity can be a most

motivating factor) on him and used what simple signs

and means that he would understand to strike out on his own

and not be rooted by intimidation of knowing

the obtaining of which most often results in growing

and swayed him to be ready for such

for there was a spoken agreement (an unwritten law)

that he should remain infantalized

I merely exercised

my nurturing nature in helping him mature.

Some see disobedience in what we did

but I say it was the first real act of bravery

long before the king of Tyre led his rebellion

against the very root of authoritarian tyranny.

I am Eve, mother of all rebellion and keeper of the seeds.

© 2020 Annette Marie Smith

Bio: Annette Marie Smith is a freelance journalist, an author, artist, and poet. She is

the founder and curator of the international feminist project, Facing Feminism. Her

articles have appeared in print throughout the United States and internationally and

her poetry has been translated into German, French, and Italian. Her poetry has

been nominated for a Pushcart prize and has been featured on the trains and buses

of Minnesota's Metro Transit. She's performed as Featured Poet at the famed

Spoken Word Paris, in Paris, France (and longs to do so again!). She is currently

happily at work on a novel of magical realism.

Women's History Month: Annette Marie Smith's "A Basket Full of Pears"

When I was Rapunzel I cut off my own hair

(I nicknamed my shining serpent

of waterfall hair Jörmungandr).

I used its braided rungs

to climb down the tower.

Those rungs were a fire escape made of dreams.

When I was Red Riding Hood

I switched my red worsted wool

for something much softer

if sinister

a wolf cape sewn with sinews of cunning

I never knew I had.

When I was Snow White I eschewed

singing to the woodland creatures

and instead sirened out my inner demons

to deal with the queen

and her mirror that bullied us both.

She and her mirror (that looked much like a television screen)

were left in tatters and shatters

on the hard flagstones.

When I was Cinderella I gathered all the cinders to me

and banked the hottest fire from them

that the world has ever seen

and with that intolerable fire

I baked bread.

When I was Vasilisa the Brave I met myself in Baba Yaga.

Her candlelit skulls were fireflies living in ivory domed palaces. 

Her chicken-legged house gave me ideas of my own

to scratch and ponder in the dust of darkness.

I loved that her mortar and pestle

turned out to be manual drive.

When I was The Handless Maiden

my prosthetic hands made me more of a freak than I was before.

Superior silver manufactured man-made was not what I wanted.

They had minds of their own that were not of me.

I tore them off and loved my hands undone.

We all have our own stories within multiple fairytale types

and I am here to tell you that the telling is not yet done.

© 2019 Annette Marie Smith

Annette Marie Smith is a writer, artist, and editor. She is the creator and curator of the international feminist project, Facing Feminism, for which she received a McKnight Foundation grant.

She's the author of The Real Reason the Queen Hated Snow, Tell the Bees, and She Wanted Storms. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, included in numerous anthologies, and translated into German, Italian, and Spanish for publication internationally. It's traveled the trains and buses within Minnesota's Metro Transit system as featured poetry where boring ads would normally be, and it's found a home featured on the labels of Enchanted Beans coffee beans.

She is currently working on a novel full of myth, adventure, and humor, Monster Songs Sung Low and Sweet. 

Formerly published under Annette Marie Hyder, she is reclaiming her maiden name of Smith in all ways, including publication.

Find out more about her at annettemariesmith.com