Casey Clague is my first featured poet who is local to me here in the Tampa Bay area.  They just completed their MFA in Creative Writing from University of South Florida. Listen to them read a couple of poems and learn more about their future goals and their interest in literary criticism and what they do for the local literary/art community in Tampa.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

 

http://caseyclague.com

 

Casey Clague holds an MFA from the University of South Florida. They live in Tampa where they cofounded the Read Herring reading series and serve as Assistant Poetry Editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection. Critical and creative work appears or is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle; Permafrost; Gravel; New Writing; and elsewhere. 

 

ANATTA

 

Darling, according to physics,

with the air    pulled out

 

from around

                        our atoms

and the atoms compressed,

 

we could fit in a sugar cube.

Humanity, I mean.

 

The skin-bound        

                             divisions of us.

Finally, the closeness

 

we sought

                    when we pricked  

our fingers     to make blood

                                     

brothers and sisters.           

What we came close to in sex

 

but even then           

                           were separated

by a silk-thin veil of sweat.

 

Before entropy sends its tendrils

through          our blank spaces,

 

crushes down our bodies

in city buses and offices,

 

let’s draw out            the dead air.  

Forget it like a hymn.

                                     Don’t say:

 

In that viewless room

we would all just face

 

the center. What would we do

                        with ourselves?