OF ANTHEMS
- Dec 9, 2022
- 1 min read
by Ignatius Valentine Aloysius
That fringe hour welcoming sunlight so bright is the quietest of fall’s weekend. A murmur slips by now and then, worshipping quieted machines that would otherwise be sopranos’ shrill sounds or flutes drilling through the genesis of night- buried thrums, while I’d slept with fingers bent tight and hands beating away my ghosts. Now within the walls something drops with a scrape and thud, so I turn my head, listening, curious, deaf to my work and paused keyboard strikes as the dog next door barks with intolerant teeth. The drywall thirsts, bits falling, and then the waist-high dresser of varnished pine squeaks from another corner. How silence sings its anthems and everything breathes.
Ignatius Valentine Aloysius earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where he won the Distinguished Thesis Award for fiction. He teaches writing in the Chicago area and is the author of the literary novel Fishhead: Republic of Want (Tortoise Books, 2020). His writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Tofu Ink Arts Press, and trampset, among other venues. Ignatius is a curator and host of Sunday Salon Chicago, a popular literary reading series, and he serves on both the curatorial and diversity boards at Ragdale Foundation. He lives in Evanston and is a mayor-appointed board member of the Evanston Arts Council, a grant-funding committee that serves the arts and BIPOC creative community.
