Burning Cold by Anne Haehl

Biting our faces

numbing our hands–

colder today, the experts say,

than experienced by most now living.

The black dog

tries to wiggle out of her red sweater

and slides with delight

on the perfectly-iced snow.

~ Anne Haehl
Bio: Anne Haehl is a lover of words, spoken and written. She is a poet and professional storyteller, Episcopalian and Quaker. She and her husband of 43 years have two grown children. They live with three cats and a dog in Lawrence, KS.

Guest Editor Eric McHenry’s new book of poems, Odd Evening, will be published by Waywiser Press in 2016. His previous collections include Potscrubber Lullabies, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 2007, and Mommy Daddy Evan Sage, a children’s book illustrated by Nicholas Garland. He also edited and introduced Peggy of the Flint Hills, a memoir by Zula Bennington Greene. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, Yale Review, Cincinnati Review, Field, Orion, The Guardian (U.K.), Poetry Daily and Poetry Northwest, from whom he received the 2010 Theodore Roethke Prize. Since 2001, he has been a poetry critic for The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Lawrence with his wife and two children and teaches creative writing at Washburn University.

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32. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Anne Haehl

This river brought my city here.
The Kaw carried people in on rafts—
they pulled out the rafts to build shanties.
The native people memorialized in a two-headed statue
didn’t even get $24 and a set of beads for this land.
Follow the trail by the river now,
you’ll see the tents that the homeless throw up.
Camping in the park is not legal.
Can’t have shanties in our fair city
Uninvited intruders should leave.
— Anne Haehl

118. Changeling: To My Husband

My parents sadly missed

the child the Faery Folk had stolen,

leaving behind their discard,

the oddling,

me.

Mother often glanced at the replacement

in vague disappointment, but

my father screamed

at the usurper

of his child’s cradle.

Who can imagine then,

who can believe the wonder—

all history turned upside-down–

in your arms

I belonged.

— Anne Haehl

Anne Haehl is a lover of words, both in writing and in storytelling. She lives with her husband of 42 years, three cats and a dog. They have two grown children. She has been published in, among others, Coal City Review, Studio: a Journal of christians [sic] writing, and Chiron Review. Her chapbook, Daughter and Mother, was published by Snark Press in 2004.