Annette Sisson

Instead of Prayer

Outside the stained-glass pane, a small
shadow rocks like a metronome, a leaf, caught
in viscous threads of web, barely anchored
in breeze, poised for flight. My father tells me

he’s ready to go each time I visit, bids
death to swoop down, talons and beak,
carry him off. No one tells you what to pray
when your father wants to die. Gray, caged

between bedrails, he twists the top sheet
tight, bound in sleep, the thin hinge
of his mouth an open door. Heaved
by wind, some leaves cleave to earth,

others strain for sky. My father craves
release. The gray leaf twitches, stranded.

Annette Sisson lives in Nashville, TN, where she has taught at Belmont University for 37 years. Her poems appear in The Penn Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Blue Mountain Review, Cider Press Review, EcoTheo, Five South, Rust & Moth, and other journals and anthologies, including Terrapin’s What the House Knows and Tupelo’s Milkweed Anthology. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books in October 2024, and her first, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre Press in May 2022. In 2024 her poem “Deep in Milkweed” was a finalist for the Charles Simic Prize, and two others were nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize. In 2025 so far, her poems have been selected as finalists in River Heron Review’s annual poetry prize and Passager’s annual poetry contest.