from “Post-Identity” by Carmen Giménez Smith

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 13, 2017   from "Post-Identity"   Carmen Giménez Smith

I was light from the mouth from every part of me I was of the earth or a scar in the earth rent through the ruins of late civilization and bubbled from it and became a saint's reptilian spirit and I could taste the wheat and coal and gold like a trinity of bounty and I was vapor like a smog that becomes a wraith over the city then back to its animal form decompressed and atomized into its past life as star and I was that animal truth the spirit I had dreamt about being more cloud and star then given I was just the density of water a reciprocity in and out the fade of my fugitive substance going south and the yearn for decadence disappears in the annals yet leaves a taste in the mouth metallic and lime the sense of dissolution and I was speed and insistence to reset the orb of gravity I was risen from foam necessitated by colony sired in violence exported as luxury            Copyright © 2017 Carmen Giménez Smith. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem is an excerpt of a long lyric poem inspired by Whitman, Neruda, spoken word, and the lyric range of Alice Notley. This particular excerpt considers how organisms and systems collide." —Carmen Giménez Smith   Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press, 2013), a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. She teaches in the creative writing program at New Mexico State University while serving as the publisher of Noemi Press. Her poetry collection, Be Recorder, will be published by Graywolf Press in 2019.   Photo credit: Jessie Bennett Poetry by Smith   Milk & Filth  (University of Arizona Press, 2013) "Irony" by Layli Long Soldier "Individual Time" by Alice Notley "Song of the Open Road, I" by Walt Whitman Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038