MN poetry: Anne Piper's "Not like fire"

Posted at 11:45 AM on January 31, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Minnesota Poets, Poetry

A detail from Anne Piper's sidewalk poem, courtesy of Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk.

Last week I wrote about the College of Visual Arts latest exhibition, featuring an installation by Charles Matson Lume. What I didn't mention was that he also did a series of pieces in the CVA's exterior display windows, inspired by the sidewalk poem imprinted in the cement on the northwest corner of Selby and Western. Here's the poem, by local poet Anne Piper:

Not like fire

Nothing flaming
or even
potentially
aflame.
Nothing
caught up
with danger.
Nothing racing to take
control
or possessions or
no prisoners.

No, our love
was never
like that.

Anne Piper lives on the West Side. Her poems have been published in a variety of literary journals. She has an MFA in poetry from Hamline University, where she received the Outstanding Poetry Thesis Award in 2008. A version of "Not like fire" appeared in Poetry East.

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