Poem Renaissance – Lana Hechtman Ayers

Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20^th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.

“What Are You Anyway?”
by Lana Hechtman Ayers
  
As if we should all be Crayola flesh tone.
 
As if we aren’t all melanin cocktails.
 
Call me oak bark and starry night.
 
I’m somewhere between euphoria
and cave light,
 
between shadow of Everest
and dewy dawn.
 
My lover calls me dusk sleet,
rusty petals, gradual tangerine.
 
You want to know my race?
 
I say inkwell.
 
I’ll check the box for earth’s molten core,
with hidden veins of gold.


                    This poem appeared in 2024 in Swing. 



Lana Hechtman Ayers, architect of the “Severed Sonnet,” has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, and elsewhere. Lana’s latest collection is The Autobiography of Rain (Fernwood Press, 2024).

Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print

Previous Renaissance Poets

April Poets

May Poets

Ralph Stevens
Wess Mongo Jolley