Anina Robb

AFFAIR

Illicit time together
It’s criminal the way I walk
with you, never
seeing past the brief pact

of winding secrecy we've made.
It's not the wordlessness,
the furtive moment like
when all the green buds

succumb to leaves
and everything I thought
about trees improves, or
the fallacy of intensity

the rich shade, the bold
lovers. Maybe I'm not
feeling brave at all
fearful of the requite,

of my full, stopped-up heart.
I know I will turn the corner,
so I step that far with you, pulsing
as if I'd just stolen

someone else's possession.
You are always a back
to me, in my dreams, the constant
walking away, my heart, brimming.


Gill Fraser Lee reads "Affair":



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Anina confesses: "I wrote "Affair" when I was working as an underpaid editorial assistant and living in one room in New York City. After work I'd sit in my neighborhood bar and watch couples come and go throughout the evening: some blissful, some miserable. This poem is my rendering of one of those unhappy scenes."


Guest editor's ruling: "I look for the same qualities as Poet Lore - 'clarity, beauty, profundity'. 'Affair' is profound but also simple. It does not deal obviously with crime, but there is a subtlety to it and an original use of imagery that captured my attention." —Gail White

ANINA ROBB lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband and two neat kids. She earned a M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and she has published poems in Nebo, The White Pelican Review, Rivendell, and Oatmeal and Poetry. This June, her poem "Triangle" will appear in the print edition of Emerge.