Ragana: Anne-Adele Wight

Anne-Adele Wight is the author of An Internet of Containment, The Age of Greenhouses, Opera House
Arterial, and Sidestep Catapult, all from BlazeVOX. For four years she curated the multi-genre
performance series Jubilant Thicket. Her work has been published internationally in print and online and includes appearances in Poets and Writers, Broadkill Review, The Adroit Journal, Luna Luna, Apiary, Bedfellows, Oz Burp, Have Your Chill, and Read On 2. She lives and writes in Philadelphia.

Toxic Box

promise nothing
or less
commit to everything
with the confidence of a toxic box
its lurid colors
lifted off a nightclub floor
find in your odd-numbered
extra corner
the essence of escape
dizzy with code violation
if only sketched in charcoal
template for a perpetual trapdoor
useless as a tattoo
on a blind sheet of paper

A Line Is a Series of Points

something that doesn’t exist is crossing
over the threshold of a haunted library

diagonal
ghost stroke from a half-dead pen
do not use this version

as the crow flies
correcting an errant measure
infinite distance
attaches one vermilion point to the next

a line doesn’t exist
a line is a series of points
neither wave nor particle

spectral conveyor belt

vertical rainbow spans the creamy height
of a lighthouse on the Indian Ocean
its green beam in sunshine set to zero

(Previously published in the tiny)

Hyena Horse Feeds her Babies

it’s a horse
it’s a hyena
as the room fills with horses

rocking horse of five o’clock
rolls neighing on its runners
through the window that looks like a painting
of racehorses with Pegasus wings

hyena horse lets them all go
it’s time to feed her young
in the living room where they have a special stall

she gave birth on straw when there were guests
she’s a virgin mother
but she still needs carrion to bring her milk in

her babies come from salt
their dripping straw smells of sturgeon
their eyes mad with knowledge
bluer than the Caspian Sea