Cameron Awkward-Rich

cantfindit

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”