Carol Anderheggen

Though born Carol Mae Ray in Miami, Florida, and, though I still love the sight of green fronds waving in a breeze against an azure sky, I am a transplanted New Englander now. I live a busy retired life in Rhode Island under the name Carol Anderheggen.  

My poems have appeared in The Great Swamp Gazette, The 2010 Rhode  Island Writer’s Circle Anthology, URI Women, Anemone, Northeast Journal, Women Against Nuclear War, A Letter Among Friends, NEARI Bylines, Newport Life and other regional journals. I have self-published two chapbooks – Are You a Born Child? and The Breast Cycle, a Journey of Dreams and Nightmares.  Each chapbook has since been published by Finishing Line Press under the titles Born-Child and Writing Down Cancer.

If you go to YouTube.com and search on my name you will be able to view me reading a few of my poems at Roots Café in Providence, RI, view the entire presentation of Writing Down Cancer accompanied by David Dragone on violin and see a half hour interview podcast conducted in August 2022.

To go to my website (carolmaeray.com) click here..

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Passing the Torch

She swims, I’m told, every day,
her fetus cushioned in its own sea.
Her body, taut and agile,
like the eternal mermaid.

She beguiles with startling blue eyes
which drill deeply down,
down into the water of your being.

She gives birth--quickly,
almost easily--to a new one of her:
a little mermaid ready
to learn the siren’s call
from the flesh of a master.

By Carol Anderheggen

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each to his/her own

typewriters type
poets compose
teachers teach
each to his/
her own

even the sun knows
its function
to blaze
heat the day
then fade away

for the moon
which knows
to glow
bright white
hanging there
in the sky
like a hot quarter
in a kid’s pocket

By Carol Anderheggen