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
Meditations in an Emergency
I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.
Published:
2020
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2022
Themes:
Poems of Place
Strength & Resilience
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)
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds that takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line; usually refers to the repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same.
Essay/Prose
written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure
Metonymy
replacing the name of a thing with the name of something closely associated
Repetition
a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”