Poetry by Annette Sisson

Annette Sisson’s poems appear in The Penn Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust & Moth, Cider Press Review, West Trade Review, and many other journals and anthologies. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books (2024), and her third book manuscript, Rhizomes and Bones, was named “runner-up” in the Cider Press Book Award (but is still seeking a publisher). In 2019 she won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s poetry prize. In 2024 and also 2025, she was a finalist for the Charles Simic Poetry Prize, and in 2025 her poems have been named finalists in River Heron Review’s and Passager Magazine’s poetry contests. Many of her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Arrangements

Behind every house he owned, my father
planted sweet corn, blue lake beans.
Indifferent to flowers, he loved the ones
who cared for them, beamed as they praised
the graceful blossoms. My mother planned
his funeral years before she died,
wrote casket spray into the pre-paid
contract. Today I pluck sienna
tea roses from the arrangement on his coffin,
divide them among cousins and friends,
recall how we stood beside his bed
touching his arm, forehead, repeated
Dad and Papaw as if he could hear
us, hoping he might. My daughter
deemed it right to bring flowers,
clipped them from her front garden,
displayed the amber blooms on his bedside
table though he couldn’t have known
they were there. Next morning a staff member
phoned us. We arrived to find
an empty hospital bed hoisted
high, clean white sheets folded
on top. My daughter made straight
for the vase, gathered up the zinnias,
offered the bright bouquet to his nurse.

Familiars

Last April I squirmed against the pillow,
windows open. Coyotes howled, seesawing
alien octaves, lifting me from the sheets.
The whole world blotted out by sound.
Next morning the terrier scrambled
to sunlit scat on the path not five feet
from my bedroom, pile large enough
to fill a shovel. This wild ritual in spring—
vocal, fecal—marks their mating, a bonded
pair joined in chorus, or a family, pups
herded back home. Tonight, our clan
gathers for the holiday. Daughter and sons,
grands, aunts, two dogs. We take stock
of our divided lives, swap chocolate,
teas, coffee beans, stories. After dessert
my son steers his retriever to the front yard,
scurries her inside again, eyes flaring.
Did you hear that? he asks. I cock the door,
pop my head into the dark—coyotes
nipping at stars, wails scaling the hills.