2015 Alaska Literary Award
Anchorage
Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013) and the chapbooks Epithalamia (Horse Less Press, 2015) and Alternates (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, storySouth, ZYZZYVA, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Georgia (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University. Alyse is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
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Alaska Epithalamium
Love punched my brains out like
Artie in the post office parking lot—
“A big Samoan hit me and now it feels
like there’s computers in my eye.”
Everything big and distorted like
the 19-hour days and the 19-hour nights,
mountains balding into summer now
as tourist traffic materializes onto streets
we first learned empty and white. All
I want: to explore the wilderness of Costco
with you in the Anchorage Dimond District,
buy a new set of Tupperware with red
lids and smooth sides. To be tamed
with you and tell you every night
which are stars, planes, and satellites.