Ann Pedone

12:02


It’s taken me a really long
time to come to terms with the
fact that
the gender of my
anger is still
anyone’s best guess

For example

There’s the lemon candy I got at
Safeway that I was fully expecting
to be sweet, but then turned out
not to be sweet at all

The three people
ahead of me in line
who, one after the
other, all shouted

Art in the Age of the Metaverse!

The text I got
from Elaine of a
photo she
took of my ex-boyfriend
buying a twelve pack of

BOUNTY

This body is my lake

Was the only response I
could come up with

Sometimes I think my problem
The reason why I have so little
understanding of my

SELF

is that I text too much

I really should give it up

Just like people give up Jesus or soda
or game shows

I have never seen this sort of sex
part before. Could you please tell me
what this is, and exactly how it works?
What are you saying? You want
me to push here??

I mean, just the other day
true story
I stood right here in
this very bathroom
directly under this very
fluorescent light
and promised myself that I
was going to stop texting

And masturbating so much

And always writing about my cunt

And telling everyone I know that I
remember exactly what my mother and
father looked like naked

Like, I really should just clean
up my act, right?
Be more like Mary
Oliver or one of
those, I
mean, look at how many books
she sold and
even though I’ve
never read any of her stuff, but

I’m pretty sure there’s not
a single clitoris

anywhere


And then the right

I need to stop bleaching my hair!
I need to renew my subscription to the New York
Review of Books!
I need to finally make that trip to Istanbul!

Then the light started
to flicker and I got really scared

Had this panicked idea that
something
really ugly was about to come
up out of the drain

So I quickly put the
phone back in my pocket

Washed my hands
with hot
water and soap
Got into bed

Lodged the phone securely under
my left ear

and went back to sleep


Ann is the author of The Medea Notebooks (spring, 2023 Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (2022, Press 53), as well as numerous chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Chicago Quarterly Review, 2River, Barrow Street, and New York Quarterly. She has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared as Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week”.