Anne Harding Woodworth '65 is the author of two books of poetry and, most recently, a chapbook, Up from the Root Cellar. Her novella in verse, Spare Parts, is forthcoming in 2008. Woodworth's poems have been published or are forthcoming in U.S. and Canadian journals, such as TriQuarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cimarron Review, and Antigonish Review, as well as at several sites on line.  She has an MFA in poetry from Fairleigh Dickinson and is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.

Crew Practice on Paradise Pond, Fall '62

André Kertész, Photographer

Disembodiments stalk him

wherever he is. Not the Eiffel Tower,

the bridge that severs it. Not the fork,

the fork’s shadow on the table. From inside

he looks out and down at roofs and shutters faded turquoise

in black and white. He is the warrior’s prosthesis detached,

absenting himself from rain-soaked sidewalks

that distort reflections of pedestrians in fedoras.

Then deeper into a space enclosed by walls,

he seeks the angles from incandescent lights

and naked women, undulants

in Coney Island mirrors. Whose outsized midriff

is that? Whose bulbous calf

is curving like a spoon? Whose arm

within the paddles of a kitchen fan? And where

do all the bodies sing? or sleep?

Soon he’ll stay inside for good and look

toward the warm enclosing chairs,

and at the end he’ll lay his head against

the crochet’d antimacassars.