Saloon Doors
By John M. Anderson


Sternum split with a surgeon’s coping
           saw of light,
boardwalk’s slattern ribcage swinging

every stranger’s silk-vest entrance, shadow’s
          laced fingers
on the barroom’s kerosene sawdust—those

are the stage flat hills, hinged gold and angel’s
           corset flapping
whalebone wings all night. Matched tortoiseshell

combs in the whore’s hair who hasn’t yet
           turned that
horned, wise, yellow-flat gaze to meet you.

John M. Anderson teaches at Boston College and spends the summer holed up with his wife, the visual artist Kathrine Douthit, in a tiny dwelling near Cripple Creek, Colorado. They drive around the southwest, imagining. Anderson has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His manuscript of poems about art and the Iraq war era was a finalist for this year's May Swenson Prize.

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