ANANSI: A PARABLE

by Steve Zeitlin

Inspired by the traditional Ghanian tale “Anansi and the Box of Stories”

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).

ON "FLICKERING" BY YOSHIO OKADA

by Jenna Le

“Flickering” Box with Sprinkled Design of Jellyfish, 2020, by Yoshio Okada

Wood box decorated with

gold and silver lacquer

on a polished black lacquer ground

with shell inlays and shell overlays

depicting the coin and ribboned-hat shapes

of jellyfish, 

those invertebrates prophesied

to engulf the ocean entire

if climate change continues unchecked: 

if this is how we must die,

well, Yoshio,

this wood box of yours

would at least make a beautiful coffin

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011); A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), a Second Place winner in the Elgin Awards; and Manatee Lagoon (forthcoming from Acre Books, October 2022). Her poetry appears in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch.