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Emma-Jane Arkady

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Anna Vann

They have a lake here too,
called Pinwood Mere and it is not
at all a lake, it is
all around with grey heaps
has not the trout or bird,
has: rusting drums and a place
where they say that girl -
the one in the TV show -
was raped.

Vann means lake; my mother,
she had white skirts and she told me so,
it means lake she said; after you.
There was a glistening one, called Anna, up there
carved in a ridge of the cliff and when
I was still in cotton, we found it
we ran in and were stung silent, by the cold,
by the crisp schist boulders, by tickling fish,
and by the sight, of our white flesh, in the translucent green;
our mouths froze open as the screams of delight
shivered, down backs now wet and tingled;
white cotton, yes,
stuck in ripples to the spine.

Their Pinmere is not the same.
I shall not allow Eino to see the place,
hold him close, read legends.

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