Ameen Animashaun is a writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poets.org, Rattle Magazine, Salamander, and elsewhere. A graduate of the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis, he is the winner of the 2025 Evaristo Prize for African Poetry, the 2024 Academy of American Poets A.E. Claeyssens Jr. Poetry Prize, and a recipient of the 2024 Starshine and Clay Fellowship. His full-length manuscript was a finalist for the 2024 Sillerman First Book Prize, and his chapbook, Calling a Spade, was a finalist for the 2024 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. He is an oddball; a butterfly.

POETRY

CONFESSION

By AMEEN ANIMASHAUN

Spring is the loneliest time, but the jacarandas / keep coming and coming as if deaf to expectations.