ISSUE 3
Steven Cordova
Acceptance Speech
I’d like to thank
the hominids
who came before
me, my Homo
family with
their ever in-
creasing brain size,
the handy tools
they fashioned to
survive (using
only local
materials!),
the hominids
who gave us all
the fire without
which surely lead
to the fire with-
in, a light by
which to paint or
make jewelry,
adorn bodies.
Most of all I
thank them for fun-
erary rites,
which proved useful
during the Ho-
mo Sapien
HIV-AIDS
pandemic now
fading fast from
everyone’s
memory. But
I digress &
will just end by
saying thank you,
thank you, um, for ...
(music swells to
remind speaker
he’s out of time).
Steven Cordova’s full-length collection of poetry, Long Distance, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010. His poems are forthcoming in Hunger Mountain Review and have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Callaloo, The Journal, New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, Los Angeles Review and Pleaides. From San Antonio, TX, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.