“Lexicon,” by Anne McCrary Sullivan (Poetry ’92)

Anne McCrary Sullivan, a 1992 poetry alum, was recently featured in the Cold Mountain Review. Read an excerpt of “Lexicon” below:

Lexicon

I want to defy what I’ve been taught

fill my lines with scientific names, creatures 
I have known—tunicates, ctenophores, mollusca.  

And if I were to praise the moon?

In my childhood, Latin names were as ordinary as rice, as likely 
to come up at the kitchen table—bryozoans, renilla, butter, please. 

Read the rest of this poem, as well as another, here: https://www.coldmountainreview.org/issues/spring-summer-2021/two-poems-by-anne-mccrary-sullivan