Saturday evening, in conjunction with Jim Daniels’ reading, was the IU South Bend student writing awards and the first reveal of the 2012 Analecta.
Since I was unable to attend, I just picked up my copy, and I’ve spent the past hour or so flipping through it, reading it, admiring it. This very well might be my favorite Analecta yet!
It’s also exciting, because I was a part, however small, in this year’s publication, since I was one of the Assistant Editors, along with a few other very awesome people, and I was also published (I included the poem below)! It’s a great feeling to have multiple roles in such an admirable annual project…
Thank you to Jeff Tatay for your awesome work and dedication to this year’s Analecta. I’m sure there are many others out there who are as excited about this year’s edition as I am.
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Poisonous Snakes
1.
You, you remember
those earlier days
when you walked along
a more putrid river
surrounded
by chamomile and violets
where the moon
hung itself
in the trees.
The new moon became
the funeral
you walked into.
You dreamt many times.
2.
You remember how, once,
your legs somersaulted
without you,
as though filled with wind,
as if they
were predetermined
amputees.
You wandered into someone else’s backyard
without them,
as if it would help stop the bleeding,
as if it would somehow tell you
you have somewhere else to be.
And when you awoke,
you walked into a woman’s yard,
hanging laundry.
Admired
the childlike size of the clothes,
the smell after washing
still suggesting illness.
3.
The rain had pelted through
the scarecrow’s body,
limp on his pole.
She placed his clothes on the line,
she said, to keep them from molding –
(while the scarecrow lay limp
on the desert rock,
he with a torn mouth,
his body –
the tan-to-brown S shape
that then suggested
poisonous snakes.)