Jen Rouse is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cornell College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Poet Lore, Midwestern Gothic, Wicked Alice, Parentheses, Yes Poetry, Crab Fat Magazine, Up the Staircase, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She was named a finalist for the Mississippi Review 2018 Prize Issue and was the winner of the 2017 Gulf Stream Summer Contest Issue. Rouse's chapbook, Acid and Tender, was a finalist for the Charlotte Mew Prize and published in 2016 by Headmistress Press. Riding with Anne Sexton, Rouse's second book, is forthcoming from Bone & Ink Press in collaboration with dancing girl press. Her plays have been produced by SPT Theatre Company and Theatre Cedar Rapids.





Jen Rouse

Anne Sexton Talks to God




Anne, frantically twisting her sea-tossed hair through her fingers: I’m telling you, you see, I’ve been here before. I remember the way you held me and then pushed me back into the water. I remember! Why won’t you acknowledge that I’ve been here?! God, turned towards the sunset, back to Anne: I know. I’m certain, for you, it felt like that. For me, it was often you there, not quite within reach yet, a tiny bird throwing herself against the pane of a window. I wanted so much for you. But you wanted your misery just a little bit more. Anne rises from the beach, throws sand at God — her usual tantrum: That’s a horrible fucking thing for God to say. You’re not really God are you? This is not where I was supposed to have landed. Where is my boat, goddamnit?! I’m going. God, softly, like the voice, of an ocean, like the arms of a tide: For some of you, I feel more maternal, and your struggles cause me something that manifests in you as a kind of hellish anguish. I would’ve let you come sooner, but you were so strong. You had to do it yourself. Such a constant dervish. The unsettled rattle of your brain. Anne: You could’ve saved me. God: You could’ve saved yourself. Anne: Why am I here? God: You decided to row.



Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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