Sara Deniz Akant

THE QUOTE

for Alison

• in the space below, please write
• a poem about who or what you are
•  

• ✦
• ✦
• ✦
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• as a long brown human fur
• I don’t know how to interpret the quote. 
• my mother calls me Mowgli the Jungle boy—
• Johnny Depp—swamp-eyed, green. she calls me 
• Miss Mean and Nasty—Caliban on the verge of greatness
• No. 3. I get to be the golem, I get to be the wombat 
• that is cooked in Wombat Stew. the cheburashka 
• of the group, I’m the human avatar for whatever 
• is supposedly in Avatar. in every pic my marsupial folds 
• are disclosing something you may have found 
• at the bottom of the sea. that is what
• my middle name means. I have no neck, tho I’m long with it—
• a slimy little newt that was made without a mouth.
•  
• he points to the things
• that were made without a mouth:

• that is you—and that is you
• —and THAT is what’s going to happen
• to you.

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• great legs, weird hair. 
• a pile of sticks held together by an ass.

SARA DENIZ AKANT is the author of Babette (Rescue Press), as well as Parades (Omnidawn) and Latronic Strag (Persistent Editions). Akant has taught poetry and writing at the University of Iowa and the City University of New York.