like a dark flame burned
my minds’s petty length.
I’m tired of human clamor,
smudge and clutter of the world.
Who wants to go on
governed by the same rude horns,
the demagogues, the rabble?
Anne Coray is unapologetic in her attempts to bring the plight of the environment to the masses. Her words are forthright, her language is clear—but Coray’s poems are not to be mistaken as easy. Bone Strings is a harrowing, magnificent, and morbid examination of Alaska’s jeopardized wilderness.
Anne Coray lives at her birthplace on remote Qizhjeh Vena (Lake Clark) in southwest Alaska. Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Poetry, Seneca Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Rattapallax, among others. She lives with her husband, Steve, and her dog, Zipper.
I
To A Father, Lost
One March Animal’s Desire
Heracleum lanatum
Scrimshaw
Common Measures
Grounded
Ars Poetica
Open Water
Mock River
The Origin of Instruments
Divested
Elegy for Four Wolves Killed by a Neighbor Last December
The Sea Cow
December Rain
II
Beneath Sleeping Lady
Interiors of the Image
Foofaraw
Etymological Travelogue
Alaskan Born
Fall Equinox Reunion
An Afternoon
And This Late Vow
Unlit
After a Fashion
Alaskan
Absence I & II
Eight Songs
-40°
Mail Run
The Ptarmigan
Waiting
Dirge
Landscape in November
Rhythmics
Joe
In the Margins
Ivory
Kinships
III
From What Col
Grain
Election Day: Reading Chevigny and Thinking About Referendum Six
Dolly
Directions
Just West of Home
Interim
January Thaw
Taxidermy
Tanka Contra Natura
Word Problem
Clearing
October Snow
Becoming the Moon
What Would You Like to Do Before You Die
Recovery
Beach Walk: Kenai Bluffs
The Unexalted
Night Petals
Notes
