Devotions upon emergent occasions:
when I was a kid, I bought these thong underwear at Charlotte Russe,
one yellow, one blue, each triangle back whale tails of 2003.
When I was a kid, I hid them from my mother and learned
to do my own laundry. Under full moons, I knelt at my window.
I prayed to pagan and Christian gods alike. One yellow, one blue.
I felt sexy for the first time, wore them to bed alone. Emergent trends
eventually collapsed, and I, a nerd, copied English textbooks word-for-word.
This confession can mean nothing to anyone but me, like my first Apple
computer in the house, or the Dreamcast, or my smartphone in 2008.
Parents, Making a Joke of You—I never wrote this then. Now, I confess,
years later, I wonder, you know, what could Don Draper really get out of
Meditations in an Emergency? as I adjust my trendy see-through dress.
Anne Lucas’ poetry has appeared in The Avalon Literary Review, Abstract Magazine, Cleaver, Timber, The Mojave River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and is forthcoming from Cider Press Review. Anne’s peer-reviewed scholarship appeared recently in Assay: a Journal of Nonfiction Studies and in a 2025 anthology from Bloomsbury, Modernism Revisited. They have been a recipient of residencies and scholarships from Sundress Academy for the Arts, MMLA, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Anne is a doctoral teaching fellow in literature at Kent State University and is managing editor of Kent’s Haymaker Literary Journal.
Image: “Faux Future Fauna” by Alex J. Tunney
Pine Hills Review 