Andrew Analore

CONTACT:
Email: aanalore@yahoo.com

BIO:
Andrew Analore lives and writes in Madison, Wisconsin. Prior iterations of himself include journalist and teacher. His poetry has been published in Technology of the Sun, Stolen Island Review, South 85 Journal, Miniskirt Magazine and The Olivetree Review.  He is the 2020 recipient of The Bluegrass Writers Studio’s Emerging Writer Award for poetry. He currently serves as the poetry editor for Jelly Bucket.

Poetry

Invocation for Sons

So, you want to know yourself?
Follow your father.

Follow him back through the sepia
photograph of a little-league team:
That’s him, first on the left,
the smiling, dark-haired outfielder,
jeans cuffed, shirt sewn
from the most delicate fabrics -
youth and hope.

Follow him to his mother’s kitchen:
It’s winter and he’s got his draft notice.
She’s cooked cuccia. He eats the sweet,
boiled wheat and she prays
to Saint Lucy: Keep my son safe.

Follow him in the early morning:
He fills his thermos with strong
coffee, tightly laces his work boots.

Follow him as he grieves – his father,
his daughter, his mother, his wife –
Follow him into the silent forest
where he’s buried their loss
in shallow graves. He’s burned
the map and vows he’ll never go back.
But you’ll find he visits often.

If you want to know yourself,
follow your father to the
place where he’s wounded:
You’re wounded there, too.

Reading at Bedtime

I am holding Leaves of Grass,
hoping she’ll ask about it.

The page is dog-eared. I know the lines:
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume, 
For every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you.”

I’ll read it and explain
how the elements
that make up our bodies
are fused in dying stars.  

But she doesn’t ask
and I don’t offer.

Instead, we fall asleep
under the blanket
of the same metaphor:

Our marriage, a book,
its binding broken
by the distance
between
the words.