Annesta
BY PADMA THORNLYRE
A college student wearing
green fatigues & a red silk
grape-cluster blouse claims
her wooden chair at the head
of a table of coffee & books.
I inhale her clove necklace,
her palms sticky with brown
turkey figs & I wd speak up
but, mid-gesture, I lose my
tongue to this green girl, this
girl of teakwood eyes, while
my helpless ears absorb
myriad bells and trumpets.
Padma Thornlyre
Padma Thornlyre has published 10 books of poetry—most recently his Anxiety Quartet in 2020-21, and one book of translations from the Ukrainian of Lyudmyla Diadchenko, Magnetic Storms (2023). He has also written a novel which is so noncommercial that even interested agents take a pass. He designs books for the poetry co-op, Turkey Buzzard Press, and occasionally takes on multi-arts projects under the Mad Blood banner. He was born and spent most of his life in Colorado, but now lives in northern New Mexico. His poetry and translations have been published in Poetry, Yellow Silk, Rattle, and Gargoyle, among others. New translations of Diadchenko will be featured in Ginosko Literary Journal Issue 35 (nine poems), and in Ezra: an online journal of translation Winter 2026 (six poems).