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Ann Tweedy The Beheading Ecolit Poetry Winner
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that spring week when tribal fishermen sold wild spot prawns, i didn’t buy any. the thought of twisting their insect-like, antennaed heads off as they wriggled in my sink, watching hands and wrists through pointed eyes, was too much. instead i buy dead shrimp farmed in clear- cut mangrove nurseries of wild fish. when the mangroves die, so does the land’s power to stave off floods and hold together. then, within four short years, farmers scrap the shrimp farms of thailand and vietnam– as soon as feces and unused feed brew poison, plankton blooms suck up oxygen, and the shrimp themselves die off, sunk as we will be, how soon? in waste. somehow the fact that somebody else cut or twisted the heads off makes this bargain worth it. when did we turn that corner and begin to think paying someone to do our dirty work erased consequence? how was the courage to face our animal needs replaced by a fear so strong we became willing to wreak any havoc? think of henry viii refusing to see anne boleyn before her execution. only in his defective, human brain could this have removed him from it. Ann finds herself inhabiting endless conflicting
and contradictory worlds—the city and the country, queer and straight,
East Coast and West Coast, lawyers and poets, Indian reservations and
mainstream America. Her most recent internal struggle is figuring out
how to live in the 21st century without destroying nature. One of her
favorite places on Earth is the Seattle Public Library. |
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All ideas and expressions contained herein represent the opinions of the authors whose names appear on each contribution, not Antioch University Seattle or the staff of KNOCK. Copyright ©2004-2007 by KNOCK, Antioch University Seattle. Trademark law protects Antioch names and logos. |
