i want to complicate the term sacred, she told me
to make holy
sacerdotal: priestly
sākris: to make a treaty
studying words allows you to
see the desecration
of connection
what people
gave up
to be white
“but i don’t want to live in this alphabet anymore”
we have a much better one.
1i commit to writing one of these before i die
Common Poetic Terms and Forms
Contest Criteria
Desecration and the origin of sacred
Bibliographical info
Emily Riddle’s “Please Write a Poetry Book in Syllabics” Copyright © 2022 by Emily Riddle.
Source “Please Write a Poetry Book in Syllabics” from The Big Melt (Nightwood Editions, 2022). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.