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National Poetry Month: Anya Krugovoy Silver

By Glynn Young 2 Comments

Anya Krugovoy Silver is professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She has published poetry in numerous journals, including Image, New Ohio Review, Witness, Prairie Schooner, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, Anglican Theological Review, Laurel Review, Iowa Review, North American Review and others. Her first collection, The Ninety-Third Name of God: Poems was published by LSU Press in 2010.

Many of the poems in The Ninety-Third Name of God deal with breast cancer – discovery, mastectomy, recovery, including the one below.

Ash Wednesday

How comforting, the smudge on each forehead:
I’m not to be singled out after all.
From dust you came. To dust you will return.
My mastectomy, a memento mori,
prosthesis smooth as a polished skull.
I like the solidity of this prayer,
the ointment thumbed into my forehead,
my knees pressing hard on the velvet rail.
If God won’t give me His body to clutch,
I’ll grind this soot in my skin instead.
If it can’t hold the flame that burned by breast,
I’ll char my brow; I’ll blacken my pores; I’ll flaunt
with ash this flaw in His creation.

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Glynn Young
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Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
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Comments

  1. Maureen Doallas says

    April 9, 2011 at 10:56 am

    Thank you for introducing a poet unknown to me.

    “this flaw in His creation”: that sticks in the memory.

    Reply
  2. Manny says

    February 9, 2016 at 10:24 pm

    Wonderful poem. Perfect for Ash Wednesday reflection.

    Reply

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