Published by The Puddin’head Press
Perfect Bound, 53 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches, 2005
ISBN# 978-0-9724339-3-7
$12.00
Praise for Ordinary
Ordinary is not a mundane collection of poems but a work that seeks to find the extraordinary in the everyday. With attention to diction, line break and stanza, Carol M. Anderson investigates the vortex between fear and faith, and does so insightfully.
Michael Bugeja – Author of The Art and Craft of Poetry
Carol Anderson takes the familiar in our everyday happenings and finds the anguish, insight, and grace that are the poetical core of common experience. This is an 18-foot tall Victory Candle to life, and the poems form a wick that burns bright in the reader’s imagination.
Tom Roby – President, Poets’ Club of Chicago
With these deeply felt poems Carol M. Anderson illuminates the loves and losses of an “Ordinary” life lived at extraordinary depth. I was extremely moved by them.
Nancy Pickard – Author of The Whole Truth
About Carol Anderson
Carol Anderson was born and raised on the south side of Chicago. At the age of two she developed a bone disease which immobilized her in bed for the next three years. There, her grandmother read to her fairy tales, Aesop’s Fables, and poetry, her index finger moving under each word. Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Land of Counterpane’ spoke directly to the bedridden child, ignited a passion for poetry which continues to this day.
Carol Anderson has had her work published in numerous literary journals including: The Aurorean, Cappers, Dream International Quarterly, Grit, Guideposts, Red Owl Magazine and Upsouth. She has had her non-poetic work published in Guideposts and Streetwise.
Contents
Crossing Alone
Ordinary Taste
Abuser and Abused
Let Me Not Go There
Cease Fire
Miscarriage
Swede and Magee
Hands
After an Argument with His Teen
Rhapsody of and in The Ordinary
New Year’s Day 2005 Birth of a Poem
Victory Candle
Chicago Calendar
Gravy Boat
The Shooting
The Reason Why
Hear My Call
Beloved
To Ray with Love
quiet now, it’s quiet now
Kaddish for The USS Cole
A Rose Patterned Quilt
Alphabet after September 11th
cool water
random thoughts on the war
For J.J. Jameson
Christened
One Day in a Bedroom
Given Song
After We Get Off Our Knees, What Then?
Quest for The Grail
Done for Today
Me, Myself and I
Ordinary of Worship
Search for You
Dichotomy
Sample Poems
Cease Fire
Cease fire, she thought
as she buried her head
in her arms
Stop shooting the mortars
directly into my path
let them fall into a hole
somewhere else where I won’t have
to dig through the debris
when the pile
topples
pick up those who are left
including myself
rummage through the rubble
to find some solid bricks
and try once again
to build something strong
from the wreckage
something able
next time around
to stand up to
falling hell
she uncovered her head
and moved through the dust
towards the wracked building
where yesterday her neighbors
lived and worked and played
Cease fire, she prayed
or hoped she did
for she could no longer hear
quiet now, it’s quiet now
It’s quiet now
they’ve all gone home
they wrapped all that food
crammed our refrigerator
washed the glasses
and tableware
lugged out the garbage bags
stuffed with paper plates
and congealed potato salad
they’ve gone home
leaving behind their parting words
“Let us know if there’s anything
anything at all
we can do.”
they’ve all gone home
it’s quiet now
too quiet
I hear the candles guttering out
along the fence
the dry petals of flowers
piled along the sidewalk
rustle loudly
but there is no snick
of refrigerator door
no voice calling
“What’s to eat?
Look what I got!”
no plop of book bag
on the floor
it’s quiet now
no shatter pop of gunfire
no shouted gang slogans
no police sirens
tear apart the silence
no squealed last call of “Mama”
no running footfalls
no peel of rubber
pull my fear to find your bloodied form
emptied of laughter and warmth
it’s quiet now
no more hymns of your classmates
no “Amens” can hide His words
“Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive
those who trespass against us!”
it’s quiet now
I can hear
the screaming
of
my soul
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