Anne Higgins
Anne Higgins teaches English at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg Maryland, USA. She is a member of the Daughters of Charity. She has had about 100 poems published in a variety of small magazines. Five full-length books and three chapbooks of her poetry have been published: At the Year’s Elbow, Mellen Poetry Press 2000; Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, Plain View Press 2007; chapbooks: Pick It Up and Read, Finishing Line Press 2008, How the Hand Behaves, Finishing Line Press 2009, Digging for God, Wipf and Stock 2010, Vexed Questions, Aldrich Press 2013, Reconnaissance, Texture Press 2014, and Life List, Finishing Line Press 2016.
The Theory of the Beautiful
The spider webs of fine wrinkles
start on the grin lines
like the orb weaver’s designs
wait to catch a gnat
or a mosquito
or at least a wince
or a wink.
I grip the skin
as I look at
sutures on my neck from
excision of a basal cell.
The stock of available reality
goes down.
I’m a prisoner of time.
Hedge something around it,
I tell myself. How about
a hedge of hew,
a word that looks like sew
on the page,
but sounds like a color
and feels like an evergreen.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 