Ann Neuser Lederer's poetry and nonfiction are published in journals such as Diagram, Passages North, Brevity, 2 River Review, Blue Fifth Review, Heron Tree, Border Crossing, and UCity Review, whose recent "noteworthy" section presented ten of her poems. Her work is also honored in Best of the Net and Ohio State University's Vandewater Poetry Award; published in anthologies such as A Call to Nursing, Pulse: More Voices, and The Country Doctor Revisited; and in her chapbooks Approaching Freeze, The Undifferentiated, and Weaning the Babies. Ann was born in Ohio and has worked there and in surrounding states as a Registered Nurse. For more information, see ann-neuser-lederer.blogspot.com.
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Can You Not ?
In the tongue that has no word for no,
I had not known
there is no word for yes.
Can you not squish that bug? I can.
I can avoid a smudge, and crime.
Instead, I flick.
A day of terrible heat gathers.
A lone dove sits in the gravel.
Above our heads – unseen -- is something nibbling.
A yellowish potential smudge plops silently upon the page.
The dove on its wobbly legs begins to scrounge.
The sun now high in the sky can not be viewed.
This morning in the pool, last day, at dawn,
a different sun, gelatinous and pink, adorable.
First talk, then look, but never the reverse. Cannot.