Telling Stories (1)
you want to tell
your babies
don’t be gristle
don’t be 3 day old bread
or burnt church
or hanging rope
but who can tell
a black _____
all is well-all is well
Telling Stories (2)
there is
a suspect
a thief
a door (wide open)
tell yourself
to stop robbing
your own cemetery
stop pilfering your
own flowers at dusk
What are You Gonna Be
for halloween
i should have been
graveyard & you
(you there)
can dress up as a
black body
drape caution tape
around your
shoulders & do your
best impression of
yeeesssss hunty
all your hunt
happening daily
all your masks
just as real
as the plot
biography
ANASTACIA-RENEE is a multi-genre writer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. She is the recipient of the 2018, James W. Ray Distinguished Artist award for Washington artists (Artist Trust), and has served as the Seattle Civic Poet from 2017-2019, and the 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is the author of five books: Forget It (Black Radish Books), (v.) (Black Ocean), 26 (Dancing Girl Press), Kiss Me Doll Face (Gramma Press), and Answer(Me) (Winged City Chapbooks, Argus Press) and has received writing fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Whiteley, Mineral School and Hypatia in the Woods. Her cross-genre writing has appeared in a TEDx talk and the anthologies: Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, Sinister Wisdom: Black Lesbians—We Are the Revolution, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks and: Ms. Magazine, Split this Rock, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, Seattle Review, The Fight & the Fiddle, Duende, Poetry Northwest, Synaethesia, Banqueted, Torch, Mom Egg Review, The Magazine of Glamorous Refusal and many more. She teaches poetry and multi-genre workshops at Hugo House, libraries, universities, and high schools.