Cameron Awkward-Rich
Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. He is a Cave Canem fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, and his second collection of poetry, Dispatch, is forthcoming from Persea Books in December 2019. Also a critic, Cameron earned his PhD from Stanford University's program in Modern Thought & Literature, and he is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Currently, he is working on a book about maladjustment in trans literature and theory. Source
Cento Between the Ending and the End
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.
Published:
2018
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2021
2023
Themes:
Faith & Hope
Friendship
LGBTQ+ Experience
Poetic Form
Literary Devices:
Apostrophe
an exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person (typically one who is dead or absent) or thing (typically one that is personified)
Imagery
visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work
Metaphor
a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”