Anastacia Renee

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.