LeVack Block, Anansi Poetry Bash

Caucasian male, 50s, with curly dark hair, wearing dark dress jacket and shirt. Family and students gathered close to the stage, whooping when he took the mic.

The Sentinel, A.F. Moritz (House of Anansi Press)

From "You That I Loved"

You that I loved all my life long,
you are not the one.
You that I followed, my line or path or way,
that I followed singing, and you
earth and air of the world the way went through,
and you who stood around it so it could be
the way, you forests and cities,
you deer and opossums struck by the lonely hunter
and left decaying, you paralyzed obese ones
who sat on a falling porch in a deep green holler
and observed me, your bald dog barking,
as I stumbled past in a hurry along my line,
you are not the one...

Her head rolls into his shoulder nightly. Their hands meet at their waists, their legs entwined. In sleep they align, their bodies folding into one another, a reduction of the best they have to offer.