Timepeace

by Sandra Anfang

All my timepieces are dying. Yesterday, it was the new clock, a cheap retro thing I ordered for its aqua frame that reminded me of childhood. The good soldiers of its arms kept marching, but never settled on the correct hour. Today, my trusty Timex landed on its face, one shard of glass ricocheting like a mad pinball under its dome. Are my devices asking me to cast them out, to ditch the charade of marking time? A rappelling spider drops a note in my lap: sit by the sundial in the garden’s soft light for there’s always enough time.

6S

Sandra Anfang is a California poet, teacher, and artist. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Rattle, The New Verse News, The MacGuffin, Spillway, and Light on the Walls of Life, the Ferlinghetti tribute anthology. She’s won many awards, most recently in the Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Contest, The Soul-Making Keats Contest, and the Poets’ Dinner Contest. Two of her haiku took second and third place in the San Francisco International Haiku Contest. Her poetry collections include Looking Glass Heart (Finishing Line Press, 2016), Road Worrier (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Xylem Highway (Main Street Rag, 2019), and Finishing School (Kelsay Books, 2023). She’s been nominated for a Best Short Fictions award, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart Prize, as well as for an AWP-sponsored 2023 George Garrett Award for outstanding community services in literature. Anfang is founder and host of the monthly series, Rivertown Poets (established 2013) and a poetry teacher with California Poets in the Schools. Besides writing, she produces a radio program devoted to poetry on KPCA.FM and hosts a YouTube channel called Rivertown Poets. Learn more here.