Most Recent: October 5, 2021
Thomas Ahneesan is a mixed-blood, poor kid, drop-out from Sioux City, Iowa who made it across the Great Plains to Seattle where she stomped around playing her songs in a band with her brother in exchange for pizza and whiskey. It did not seem like a fair trade so she began reading poems for Margin Shift under the auspices of her mentor, the great Jane Wong. She was never paid but somehow it was a good trade. People huddled in an art studio downtown in fold-up chairs with twinkling eyes was much better than flowing jackpots at a casino pizza party with whiskey flowing like a river of troubled amber. She now studies poetry at the Vermont College of the Fine Arts and hopes to publish her first chapbook. Soon. Before she’s clutching dead roses in a casket in Salem, where she now lives. She doesn’t really want to die before she publishes a book of poems. It would be okay in the end, but boy--- it would be a damn shame. Just think about it: a ne’erdowell, 7th grade dropout becomes a published writer and triumphs over impossible obstacles, reaching people all over the world, perhaps reading by flashlight thinking: oh my god… this is what it feels like. Just like this.