Annette M. Sisson
Outside the Frame
after Remedios Varo’s painting “Rupture”
A woman resists the canvas, her journey—
silent birth, the slit between gravid
doors. She descends wide stairs
as if steps were shallow coffins
of ancestors’ bones. If she reaches
the flat path, she might breathe
new air—or be locked away.
She inches down, again, again,
measured, her feet subtle, sun
brazen on her body, beyond the walls
one radiant, the other dull.
Bare trees tempt the cloud
burning behind her—she rebuffs the wind
that whips muted flames and thrashes
curtains sideways. Rapacious eyes
observe her flight, cannot fathom
how she moved the heavy gates,
nor see flecks of copper sky
in her gathered cloak. They do not mark
the sinews of the woman’s delicate feet,
her stark passage the light frameless
About the Author
Annette Sisson’s poems can be found in Birmingham Poetry Review, Nashville Review, Typishly, One, The West Review, HeartWood Literary Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and others. Her first full-length book, Small Fish in High Branches, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press (2022); her chapbook, A Casting Off, was published by Finishing Line (2019). She was named a Mark Strand Poetry Scholar for the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a 2020 BOAAT Writing Fellow, and winner of The Porch Writers’ Collective’s 2019 Poetry Prize.