Anita Gevaudan Byerly

Anita Gevaudan Byerly is a resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a single parent, she raised two children, working as a secretary, and then went back to school at age 50. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in English Writing and was Poet-in-Residence at St. Edmund’s Academy, an elementary school in Pittsburgh, for eight years. She is a Fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, has taught at the project’s Young Writer’s Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and served on the editorial staff of Riverspeak, their annual publication. Anita is also a member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop, the Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania Poetry Societies, and Tea Time Ladies, a performance poetry ensemble which performed in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area from 1992 through 1998. Her work has appeared many times in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and she has also been published in The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Ledge, The Exchange, the Loyalhanna Review, The Sandburg-Livesay Anthology and yawp Her poems have appeared online in poetrypoetry.net and poetrymagazine.com. Anita won the In Pittsburgh Newsweekly Poetry Competition in 1987, was a finalist in the 1994 Negative Capability “Eve of St. Agnes” Poetry Competition, a semi-finalist in the 2000 Comstock Review Poetry Contest., and a finalist in the 2000 Acorn-Rukeyser Chapbook Contest. She is the author of a recently released chapbook, Digging a Hole to China.

E-mail Anita at Bypoetno1@aol.com

BRADDOCK AVENUE

They'll never come back: two furniture stores,
three banks, three movie houses -- Capitol, Times,
and Paramount, where at 13 I let a strange boy
put his hand on my knee, then confessed it
to old Father Joe at St. Mary's on Sixth Street;
and where at 21, a ring was slipped on my finger
while we watched "On the Town" in the dark.

I loved to shop the day before Christmas
at Shub's for fresh roasted peanuts,
the smell catching you before you even got in the door.
I loved to stop at Och's Delicatessen
for corned beef; Nill's for poppy seed bread.
I loved bright lights strung across the street,
green wreaths, decorated trees in the windows --

before Braddock Avenue died, like the mill,
Carnegie's first. Gone are DeRoy's Jewelers,
Jaison's, the Famous Department Store,
to the malls leaving boarded doors, blind windows.

Oh, to be there again before black Friday in Dallas
before that long funeral march down Pennsylvania Avenue
with the black riderless horse and the muffled drum cadence
reverberating on every Main Street, in every home.

Oh, to be back on Braddock Avenue
when our world was a Saturday matinee,
a dance at the Polish Falcons, where a tall woman
in a polka-dot blouse danced the schottische
with a short man in matching shirt, toupee awry.

Published in poetrymagazine.com and the 2000 Sandburg-Livesay Anthology

COTTON CANDY

The tune of the carousel
drifts through the park
as a child of six alights
from a winged horse
into her father’s arms.

She loves this ride
with its gilded mirrors,
thousand glittering lights,
but her eyes now turn
to a cart beside the lake.

It is mother who says no,
not because it isn’t good for her,
but because it’s something,
counted pennies
can’t be squandered on.

        How can the child explain
         ... a pink cloud,
        a flamingo at rest,
        a ballerina’s pirouette.

Even today when she knows
the sweetness dissipates
quickly on the tongue, 
she longs for the spin
of sugar, the whirl
of unessential fluff.

Published in the Westmoreland Arts and Heritage Festival Anthology, 1999

DANDELIONS

Bright blossoms,
basking in the sun,
you offer leaves for salad greens,
tops for dandelion wine,
then change to pale gauze
lightly lifted by the wind.

Poor maligned flower,
cursed for your fecundity,
if you would bloom but once each year
at midnight on the first of August,
crowds would wait for your appearance;
the press would send photographers.

Your zest for life dooms you, but I
can think of no more lovely sight
than suns scattered across an emerald sky,
moons rising unexpectedly.

Published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 1994 and poetrymagazine.com, 2001

ON SEEING 
THE VENUS DE MILO 
AT THE LOUVRE

You lean slightly forward, one knee bent,
a little off balance without your arms.

Aphrodite, did you reach to greet a lover, 
or lift an apple to those perfect lips?

Perhaps you plucked a love song sweetly 
on a lyre, or sniffed a fragrant rose.

You may have taken Cupid by the arm, 
dried a tear from his round face.


I wonder if you held your looking glass 
to check no hair was out of place,

or simply tried to catch the fold
of fabric falling from your hips.

And did that unnamed farmer, who found you 
instead of water beneath the centuries

of Milos dirt, dig another day 
to unearth a finely chiseled hand

he hid from view and kept
to softly hold against the night?

Published in The Ledge, 1996

WITHOUT WINGS

Under the parkway overpass,
mounds of pigeon dirt
are cemented to the sidewalk
at the 61B stop. The birds live
in concrete eaves, building nests
where traffic flows above and below.

“I found one last month
with a bullet hole in its wing,”
the slight woman says
as I duck a pigeon
that flies low over my head,
lands near a discarded
potato chip bag.

She wears a gray pantsuit,
her hair pulled back, cratered
face unadorned with make-up.
“I took it to the vet. He said
it would never fly again. So
I took it home, fixed up
an old birdcage.”

“Oh,” I say as the bus pulls up,
thankful I hadn’t made any
disparaging remarks. I think of her
waking each morning to the soft
coo of the pigeon. I imagine
her taking it for a walk, staying
a short step behind in case
it is startled. I see the crippled
bird eating bread crumbs
from her fingers.

Published in the 2000 Sandburg-Livesay Anthology