"Cento Between the Ending and the End" by Cameron Awkward-Rich

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 30, 2018   Cento Between the Ending and the End   Cameron Awkward-Rich

Sometimes you don't die when you're supposed to & now I have a choice repair a world or build a new one inside my body a white door opens into a place queerly brimming gold light so velvet-gold it is like the world hasn't happened when I call out all my friends are there everyone we love is still alive gathered at the lakeside like constellations my honeyed kin honeyed light beneath the sky a garden blue stalks white buds the moon's marble glow the fire distant & flickering the body whole bright- winged brimming with the hours of the day beautiful nameless planet. Oh friends, my friends— bloom how you must, wild until we are free.              Copyright © 2018 Cameron Awkward-Rich. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'Cento Between the Ending and the End' is composed of language scavenged from the works of Justin Phillip Reed, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Fatimah Asghar, Kaveh Akbar, sam sax, Ari Banias, C. Bain, Oliver Bendorf, Hanif Abdurraqib, Safia Elhillo, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, Franny Choi, Lucille Clifton, and Nate Marshall. All of whom have made for me a world and for whom I wish the world." —Cameron Awkward-Rich   Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of Dispatch, winner of the 2018 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award and forthcoming from Persea Books in 2019. He is an assistant professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.   Photo credit: Sam Ace Poetry by Awkward-Rich   Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) "Heavy" by Hieu Minh Nguyen "the valley of its making" by Nate Marshall "No More Birds" by Ari Banias August Guest Editor: Evie Shockley   Thanks to Evie Shockley, author of semiautomatic (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Shockley and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! 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