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Annick Yerem
Barbara Dietl
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the poet
Annick Yerem is a Scottish/German poet who lives and works in Berlin. She's been published by River Mouth Review, Anti-Heroin-Chic, 192 Magazine, Green Ink Poetry, Sledgehammer Lit and more. Annick has also been a guest reader on Eat The Storms and Open Collab. Her first chapbook, St. Eisenberg & The Sunshine Bus, is due out in 2022.
the poems
St. Eisenberg
& The Sunshine Bus
I am sure now that you were sending me signs
Heavens opened and closed, heat blazed
through me. The smell of freshly poured
tar on the motorway, turbines, sunflowers,
left right centre
We stopped for a break near parched
woods, found raspberry gifts, barley
spikelets, wispy and gleaming like fairy hair
The damp, green quiet after a big rain,
fog hanging low in the mountains,
blurred brake lights
Midway, I lay down in a parking lot, crying
on my dog's blanket, trying to make sense
of what we were doing
You were sending me signs:
robins, rainbows, star fish trails
That day, we drove towards your body,
to that uncluttered, bright space which enclosed
your darkness in those last, long years
That room where, when you left, someone
opened the vast window, so that your soul
could find its way out
Belonging
After Brené Brown | For Ankh and Cate
You wordful mindsmiths,
you seawitch patterned beauty
along cat-eared shores.
You fill cars with music,
You send love over thousands of miles
(I imagine) the air around you smells
of sandalwood
You are who you are, no need to
feed those unkind fires
You belong here,
stand your ground,
will a forest of breath and light
into being.
Then steady its roots
with your ways, your wonders.
When you call me six times
at 1am, I think of One Art
I've made a science out of listening to the space
between books, the silence between songs,
tiny increments of time suspended mid-word
I bring songs to this fight, make mountains
of lingering doubt disappear, send arrows
into apple trees.
Say windfalls, say what
you see, what you don't.
Forgetting is so hard to master.
It is not purpose, not spite, but
years of fights and fears pulled to
the surface of an unquiet lake.
A code for your memories,
how was your day, your breakfast/lunch/dinner,
the last book you read? Tell me,
what can I do to make this better?
I offer sugarcoated words:
take a pick, pick three.
Say I love you.
Mean it.
Publishing credits
St. Eisenberg & The Sunshine Bus / When you
call me six times at 1am, I think of One Art:
exclusive first publication by iamb
Belonging: Bale of Joy (The Failure Baler)