Iverson’s sensibilities from experimenting in the visual arts are evident in her clear, unusual imagery. She salvages from the wreckages of love and loss, and we can’t help but smile with her when she offers witty musings on the world. In the ephemeral world that forms around the poems in Come Now to the Window, a bird in flight may appear suddenly, but a tarantula and a brachiosaurus are also in the neighborhood. 

In the poem, “The Sick Cat,” Iverson’s compassion is elicited as she prepares to leave for work “….where not a single small thing needs me or cries out.”  Here, love is love and death is death. The mysteries, joys, and pain of the human condition coexist naturally. Without a hint of self-pity, even the deepest of losses - the death of a mother, for instance - are handled with a light touch:  “When I least expect her,/ She rises in me like a beautiful letter never sent.”   

Ann Iverson’s poems have been published in a variety of literary journals, including Water~Stone (2000, 2001; Margie: The American Journal of Poetry (2002); and The Oklahoma Review (2003).  Her artwork can be viewed at threecandles.org and her popular poem, “The Cats” which was beautifully produced as a broadside by book artist, Regula Russelle, is available at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. The following poem, "Breast Cancer" was featured on Garrison Keillor’s radio program, Writer’s Almanac, in September 2004.

Breast Cancer

One time while painting in an unventilated space
my husband said, "Ann, breasts absorb everything,
every toxic fume and chemical there is."
                          ~
I began to think of all the breasts in the world:
upright and alert in uncomfortable under-wire bras
or maybe weary and hanging with no support at all
vulnerable and innocent breasts.
Albino, cream chocolate, mint, bruised, bitten,
tangled, tired, silicone, yellow,
happy east and west.
                          ~
Canine mammary cancer spreads identically
as it does in a woman:
Lump, lymph nodes, lung, back, brain.
The very obedient dog began to wet the carpet
about a year after the malignancy was removed.
That night after supper her legs gave out
and the cat came to touch noses.
The collar and tags are what they gave me.
My mom just loved that dog.
                          ~
I have four sisters, which makes this fear tenfold.
For goodness sake, Mother,
you settle in my heart like a house at night.
The slowest creaking in memory sinking deep into the earth:
I am four, you bathe.
I peek through the keyhole.
I hear singing from the tub,
your brassiere hanging from the doorknob.