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).

POLITICIAN

by David Spicer

Landlocked again in frozen Iowa,
I’m still the captain of my ship,
I’ll still charm all of you sardines
and mackerel until you swoon,
all of you sharks and seagulls
who’ll swallow anything,
I won’t show mercy when you
float in the fever you catch.
I can cajole you to destroy each other,
or dazzle you to hug in a unified trance
before you lose grip and slide
into the twilight of your dance.
I can convince you to swim in oil-soaked ice,
and you’ll delight in this devilish smile
while we brandish my motto for the mission:
Our Love of Me Beams Like a Hundred
Lighthouses. Your wet minds are useless,
I’m a trickster who’ll defeat any fool
or liar, so when belief sinks in your
hypnotized faces, I’ll swagger
toward you — I’m a riot of one,
and you’ll stutter at my beck and call,
for I possess the ships, the oars, the nets,
I’m my own harpoon: none of you can
elude the epidemic of me as I gore
you, skewer you, and sell your
sorry souls to the highest bidder.


David Spicer has poems accepted by or published in such magazines as Reed Magazine, The Curly Mind, Slim Volume, Yellow Chair Review, Jersey Devil Press, TheNewVerse.News , On the Rush, Circle Seven, Phantom Kangaroo, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., and elsewhere. He is also the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, plus eight unpublished manuscripts.