Featured Poet: Anthea Snow
Good morning! Today’s feature is Anthea Snow, both an artist and a poet whom I deeply admire. We became friends through facebook a short time ago, and I’m very excited to have her on as a feature! She has numerous chapbooks under her belt, as well as a book which I’ll link to at the end of the post.
Odyssey
Three shots and a joint
at Kerouac’s grave
passing jack to johns and Jill’s
Troubadours all,
slipping from behind the wheel
of red education
a ride that brings revolution down
in hellfire sermons
spit fired at the masses
from a mobile pulpit
but you, Jack
are still in death
greeting punk pilgrims as kin
us low down degenerates as family
and I guess we are
reading in the room that alcoholism built
you and Poe
so different
but this bar,
this bar,
is the line we draw
through generations of starvation
sometimes leading to creation,
we build on the foundation layed
by so many dead sunflowers
leaching radiation from the soil
killing themselves in the process
we all die
signed the warrant
declared poet on arrival
I only pray my grave is
as littered with love as yours.
Darned Edges
Maybe its true
that losing you
left a hole in me
that I cant quite see
or reach, but I stretch
with needle and thread
tying off loose ends
but I can never quite
get to the heart of it
the body incarnate
so I light a candle to
set the needle safe
to insert again and
I never quite find
resolution, but, there,
on the neck of my shirt
a spot of red reminding me
of everything that was
busting my Fibrous soul
from between sheets of skin
darned if I don’t darn the edges
singe the nylon
pull taunt the cervical mast
until I right myself again
but rebirthing yourself on the daily
takes a lot of Champaign
and I’d rather just break the dingy off
Radix Apokálypsis
I am a radical apocalypse
a radix apokálypsis
the apotheosis of apocryphal
notions of being an ocean
a tide of turning pages
that looks in
I look into you
and see the radical
the radix
the root
how my mycelia
weaves into your veins
exposing both our pain
as a tide returning in
7 and 12
purple-gold luck favours
the bold
but my past affinity for green
warns of apocalypse
apokálypsis
an ellipsis
in the pages of our story
the revelation of observations
made in suffering
I release myself of mooring
and capsize my leviathan
to reveal golden turtles in my wake
and they tumble under the tow
of so many dead words
words you kill in fear and pain
wounds I opened in fear and pain
the losses we orchestrate in
synchronized ignorance
ignoring the significance
of indifference
speaking around issues in love
until historical imperatives
reset narratives
and everything is green
growing in messy tendrils
feeding each other in feted soil,
soil waterlogged with tidal salinity
before eroding into endless seas
healing takes heart
the whole goddamn thing
served on silver
raw bleeding
We gorge ourselves
on what bits remain
The Great
Gatsby paints in uranium green
portraits of tidal lights
that draw ships to sun-dry
as their crews pillage sundry
from steeple shores
the congregant mass
mills about the town
making waves in salt-licked
solemnity, saddling
stolen war ponies to ride into
recklessly abandoned fields
that grow corn,
twined in sweet beans
ground cushioned by squash
They find refuge here
before burning all they know in
sanctified apathy
saying, "it is what it is"
and "c’est le vie"
till the cows come to roost
and Gatsby loves the colour,
knowing micro doses of death
never really harvest til fall
and his sisters three
still need to dry
he cleans the florescent brush
on a neon tongue
and prays the end is slow
romanticizing the waiting dead
consumption the latest fad
resurrected like so many bodies
Psalms
the imposter syndrome of disability
the odd affirmation of
suicide prevention packets
at every damn appointment
not that I'm suicidal
just that, at least my condition
warrants that concern
that its not just in my
diminishing mind
that my body is breaking
that I am breaking
into shards of coloured glass
that never seen to sit,
steady goes on to
nothingness
til I retreat into the ache
and watch myself contort
into truth
that I am a liminal hall
the echo of myself
screamed into nothing
and hearing my pain hurled back
in acoustic drags
I inhale
the feted air
breathe fire
in verse
and smoke
in medicine
but never heal
just watch my blood disappear
one test at a time
and not know
what time holds
or if I have it
just ticking of days
appointments and calls
disassociation and dishes
Broken rings and fear
I am so goddamn afraid
fear is the root of my shame
my protestant ethics
through Baptist beatings
I still know psalms.
Bio
Anthea Snow (formerly C.S. Mathews) is the Author of Phrenology (EMP Press 2023) and five
chapbooks including Ecstatic Birth (TwoKey Customs, 2024) and Ekphrasis (completed on an
1886 Chandler Price printing press while in residency at OAC). The co-editor and co-founder of
The Grind Stone Press, she is the cover artist for 32 books. Starting off as an independent
journalist and medic during the protests in 2020, her work focuses on the reality of existing on
the margins within late-stage capitalism. She has performed and spoken to audiences across
the US, often touring by bus, train, plane, or crammed 5 poets deep in a hatchback
You can find a copy of Phrenology here https://a.co/d/hmcxnyN
