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Anna Evans

FEELING COMPASSION FOR OTHERS
          after Molly Peacock

Feeling compassion for others is the right
way to feel. It’s one way we can prove
to friends we’ve finally grown up, when it might
be tempting–human, even–to lord it above
someone instead. At twenty when I stole
a boy my best friend had adored for months
I was quite insufferable. I told
her she needed a hobby. That’s how to punch
a girl when she’s down. I think I would do better
now, but really, would I? When you’ve won
something intangible, you never get a
ribbon, only the pleasure of seeing the wan
face, and hearing the loser mourn the loss.
I suppose I’m trying to say that I don’t blame you:
to hear the mitigating facts could cost
just what it costs to write this and not name you.

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

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Anna Evans

CRASH

Accident weather: sheet rain, relentless spray
thrown up from tires, the road a slippery gray
in which car headlights shimmer like fish scales,
while drowning houses blink through damp green veils.

And I take care now; I take so much care
to feed the wheel through fingers, prayer by prayer
for all the travelers cased in treacherous metal,
sweating the wet commute with foot to pedal,

because a month ago in strobe light sun
on a road scrubbed clean and dried, I killed someone,
though I was not, no, I was not to blame.
He did not see me turning left. He came

hurtling up on his black sclerite bike.
Perhaps he screamed before I felt the strike
of his helmet on the rear door of the van.
I do not know. I heard nothing. The man

and bike slid, unredeemable, to the ground.
Then the bright crowd gathered, mouths in round
o’s of melodrama. The police said he
was riding too fast. It wasn’t me. Not me.

I saw his body, whole as if asleep
upon the asphalt, bike a yard sale heap.
So little blood! Death in a sky blue cloak,
arriving like the punch line of a joke

I didn’t quite get.
Now, in the wind and rain,
with that comic, Death, stalking the wings again,
it won’t be my fault. (It wasn’t.) These days I drive
with so much care, the man would have to live.

–fromRattle #30, Winter 2008