Poem of the Week | September 18, 2017

Derek Annis: “We Prepared Well for Your Arrival”
This week, we are pleased to present a new poem by Derek Annis. Annis is a graduate of The MFA at EWU. His work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Crab Creek Review, The Meadow, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, and Heart of the Rat: an Anthology, among others. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Spokane, Washington.
We Prepared Well for Your Arrival
–A triptych
Author’s Note:
In 2013, my wife and I were expecting our first baby. On the first day of the second trimester, the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. There were moments when that loss felt tangible, concrete. There were moments when it felt as though I was inhabiting a dream, or a fairytale. Then there were moments when those two seemingly contradictory feelings merged, making a third thing: what seemed to me a perfect experience of grief. “We Prepared Well for Your Arrival” is an attempt at transcribing that experience.
I think of this poem as a triptych. It can be read three ways: everything outside of the parentheses (tangible/concrete), everything inside the parentheses (dream/fairytale), or all together (as it appears on the page). Each way of reading is one “panel” of the triptych.
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