Fly Away Home | Ann Neuser Lederer

Ann Neuser Lederer's poetry and nonfiction are published in journals such as Diagram, Passages North, Brevity, 2 River Review, Blue Fifth Review, Heron Tree, Border Crossing, and UCity Review, whose recent "noteworthy" section presented ten of her poems. Her work is also honored in Best of the Net and Ohio State University's Vandewater Poetry Award; published in anthologies such as A Call to Nursing, Pulse: More Voices, and The Country Doctor Revisited; and in her chapbooks Approaching Freeze, The Undifferentiated, and Weaning the Babies. Ann was born in Ohio and has worked there and in surrounding states as a Registered Nurse. For more information, see ann-neuser-lederer.blogspot.com.   _______________________ Can You Not ?   In the tongue that has no word for no, I had not known there is no word for yes. Can you not squish that bug? I can. I can avoid a smudge, and crime. Instead, I flick. A day of terrible heat gathers. A lone dove sits in the gravel. Above our heads – unseen -- is