Anansi was not an itsy bitsy spider
but a trickster from Ghana
who asked the Sky God for some stories
God supplied only an empty story box
so the tricky, spindly spider
traveled the world gathering tales
till the spider stole all the stories ever told
and stored them neatly, categorically,
searchably, in the box.
Then Anansi scrambled tales, fabricating
new ones, till we, the tellers, grew superfluous
We pleaded with the Sky Gods to help us
take back the box of stories.
stamp out the spider
give the tales back to those who lived them.
We confronted the arachnid ––
you’re not the real Anansi,
ancient figure of legend and lore
tell us your real name! we cried!
AI, the scorpion replied.
Steve Zeitlin is the Founding Director of City Lore, New York City’s Center for Urban Folk Culture, and co-founder of the Brevitas poetry collective. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, I Hear America Singing in the Rain (First Street Press, 2002), and How Do You Wear the Universe? (2026, Mediacs Press) as well as twelve books on America’s folk culture. In 2016, he published a collection of essays, The Poetry of Everyday Life: Storytelling and the Art of Awareness (Cornell University Press). In 2022, he published JEWels: Teasing Out the Poetry in Jewish Humor and Storytelling (JPS/U. of Nebraska Press).