Poem of the Week By Annie Jane Wilder

Biography:

Annie-Jane Wilder (AKA Annie Petrie Sauter) Has been writing for underground papers, (RAT and Tribe to name a few) journals, since the 1960s. Her first piece was published by The Berkeley Women’s Collective, a poem about women living on the streets in the 1970s. She has always been a writer and a visual artist , paining and writing on her walls as a child. She considers herself a spoken word poet and has been featured and published in many venues from Maverick Press in Eagle Pass Texas  to Bright Hill in Treadwell, NY to The National Beat Poetry Foundation, in CT, to venues in NYC Puma Perl’s Pandemonium , Anne Husick Presents, and others and in communities  and on the less rugged, snowy Western Slope of Colorado.  Her writing is mostly in the confessional style. Her biggest influences are the writings of  Sylvia Plath, Karen Fabiene, William Styron, Jack Mueller, ( only met him once, it was just a vibe) and all the unknown unwashed open mic participants in the world. Thanks of Course to Debbie Tosun Kilday, mostly for being my friend.

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Backstory:

Assumption: (Wiki with references to eastern and western Marian Codes) “It leaves open the question of whether Mary died or whether she was raised to eternal life without bodily death.[3] The equivalent belief in the Eastern Christianity is the Dormition of the Mother of God or the “Falling Asleep of the Mother of God”. The word ‘assumption’ derives from the Latin word assūmptiō, meaning ‘taking up’. It can also mean having an opinion based of emotions, or misunderstanding of science or humans , or just a misreading of a situation based on incorrect “facts”

In January, I usually write about women, and birth and death and struggles to be female on this planet. I am not saying that it is easy to be a man, woman, child or anyone or any sentient being on this planet. I lost a child demonstrating against Nixon’s inauguration . Jan 1973. In this piece I am trying to say that in Catholicism, transubstantiation is a tenant that says when a communicant receives communion that they are receiving the actual blood and body of the risen Christ. What I am saying is that I long for a day when we all recognize that we all carry ourselves, our souls, or energies of whatever we call that spark of universe and that I want it made real-because I believe it is. I am not religious, or even spiritual, but that is not to say I don’t love ritual and am not superstitious or curious about that nature of things. Seen and unseen.

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Assumption

Walking alone. Carrying, It all
In my arms. In my hands, in my mind-All
My Dis-incorporations
My beliefs. Flowing
Ash-line-fine, as dry sand
Between
My feeble fingers. Rolls . Of Thought— , like a
Kerouac notebook. No a Woody
Guthrie outrage . Pantomimed
Stymied . By a Huntington’s
Of a different order
A weakness of spirit
All my own.
An inability to persevere , to keep going
To triumph over
A last temptation
Of a lesser-than-Christ , I
Struggle just to find the words to say , I
Had just turned 22, I was 8 1/2 months into
A doomed pregnancy
Conjured by need and sperm in a back seat
Drunk . On the lower east side ,
Mistakes were made? Deaths, of all sorts :
Were
Died:
Physical. Spiritual. Judgmental.
Of Naiveté
Dead. Resurrections. Only .
Less-than in nature and
Assumption ? Belongs to Mary
Maybe lunar blood will have to suffice ?
Since I don’t have any
Left . Any way in
English or in Translation
I want transubstantiation
Of my body
Into something. Edible . Sourdough
And my blood into an
Undrinkable. Wrath…

 

© 2025 Annie-Jane Wilder