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Anne Whitehouse

Anne Whitehouse's poetry collections include Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, and, most recently, Outside from the Inside. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love, and her fiction has appeared widely in literary magazines. Her long poem, Surrealist Muse, about Leonora Carrington, is available as a chapbook and online. Her essay, The Imp of the Perverse, is about Edgar Allan Poe.



Indian Love Call

Like the colored breath of a spring evening
made liquid, O green water with a bed of stone,
that has taken her, the faithful one. Alone
in remorse she edged the cliff, life-abandoning,
her body soft in its season, her black hair
streaming--she fell like a rock from the rock.
This is the legend. Hear it and mock.
A thousand beery afternoons silver the air
with revel. Youth is immortal. Shatter
the sun, dive like the knife of derision
into the cold, the shimmerless. Envision
her splintered bones the eons of pebbles scatter,
absolving the stone's caress; tickle of fish.
And rise. You are not drowned. Take back your wish.

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