Two Poems by Annah Browning

WITCH DOCTRINE

The old ones say to draw

your broom across

 

the step, then pull the latch.

On the snow’s arrival,

 

witch doctrine says, you bring

the dogs in. No howlers

 

left alone. The gray muzzled

and the slow-cancered, their

 

heavy bellies wander home, and

the skinny ones, too, those

 

you feed dark blood of chickens-

a canine wine. But remember,

 

daughter: there are nights you’ll have

to walk out alone. Know

 

there’s nothing so bad about

a cold wind reaching

 

through your shirt to your

chest, the strong

 

contraction of your stomach-

it says, keep walking. A long

 

winter is ahead, and you’ll study it

like a lover. You’ll learn

 

its white sides and its gray

sides, you’ll learn branches’ pop

 

and crack, their glassy reflections.

And when one whips

 

your cheek like a hot blade, you’ll

thank it. You’ll take

 

another branch for the fire,

and you will make it.

 

DEAR GHOST

I am not good at telling
if you are real. Do me
the favor of existing, please. Press your face
into the burn of the toast,
or clearly film the bathroom mirror. I would love
to call you ghost, or house­
mate, or even house- is that you in the pipes,
whistle-buddy? I don’t
know. I drink my coffee black as hair. When I
come inside, I cradle
the newspaper like a child, a gray baby full of new
bad words. Did I say it
out loud, this bit about the eye cancer that buries
itself deep inside the rods
and cones? A color- cancer. I think you like
things faded. I think you
love an oatmeal, a wet sock, the salt line on
a boot. Where the world
licks us, passing by.