Weekend in Pleasant Shade, Tennessee
by Annette Sisson
My husband buys five acres east of the city
to build a fish camp. He urges me to clear
my calendar Friday to Sunday, suggests I can
photograph autumn’s flaming hills, write
in my journal while he casts his fishing line
for bluegill and bass. Like an uncle’s rumpled
trench coat, sleeves too long, worn through
at the elbows, this rough-hewn house blunts
my sculpted life. Yet this place fills him
like the clods of dirt he packs into snake holes,
wind scuffing the ridge. So I spend the weekend
at the cabin. For him. For the porch and light-
splayed clouds. Quiet water. I watch him
unload two-by-fours, fashion baseboards,
reach for his screw gun. I pick up my pen,
blend words into textures. A fawn’s furred
spots, jagged bark, leaves veined like wings.
Bodies of slick fish, bendy and alive.
A native Hoosier, Annette Sisson has lived for many years in Nashville, TN with her partner and her soft-coated wheaten terrier. Her poems appear in The Penn Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust & Moth, Cider Press Review, and other journals and anthologies. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books in 2024. Her first book, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2022, and her third book manuscript, Rhizomes and Bones, is currently seeking a publisher. In 2024 she was a finalist for the Charles Simic Poetry Prize and two poems were nominated for The Pushcart Prize; in 2025 her poems have been named finalists in River Heron Review’s and Passager Magazine’s poetry prizes, and one is nominated for The Pushcart, another for Best of the Net. You can find her on her website, on Instagram, and on Facebook.
