Poetry / Derek Annis

:: Damages ::

:: Manifest ::

From the writer

:: Account ::

I live in Spokane, Wash­ing­ton, where I was born and raised. Spokane is the sec­ond largest city in Wash­ing­ton State. It’s sur­round­ed by pine for­est. There is a spec­tac­u­lar water­fall right in the cen­ter of the city. There is a fair­ly small down­town area with a hand­ful of sky­scrap­ers, two hos­pi­tals, a mall, and a movie the­atre. It has many prob­lems, includ­ing crime and home­less­ness, but it is an exceed­ing­ly pleas­ant place to live. It’s one of the few places in the US where the min­i­mum wage is a liv­ing wage for a sin­gle per­son. There are four rep­utable col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties here. The lit­er­ary scene is thriv­ing, as is the rest of the arts com­mu­ni­ty. It is also home to a group of rav­en­ous devel­op­ers who would like to turn Spokane into a stereo­typ­i­cal big city. This group favors econ­o­my over ecol­o­gy. They favor large cor­po­ra­tions over local busi­ness. They run cam­paigns against increased fund­ing for pub­lic trans­porta­tion because those who use it are unde­sir­able to peo­ple of high­er socioe­co­nom­ic stand­ing. They oppose any leg­is­la­tion that would give res­i­dents the pow­er to decide which busi­ness­es can oper­ate in their city. And they are get­ting what they want. I didn’t sit down to write about these devel­op­ers or their envi­ron­men­tal impact, but I think that both “Man­i­fest” and “Dam­ages” came from my fear over what I see these devel­op­ers doing to the city I love.

Derek Annis is a grad­u­ate of the MFA at EWU. Dur­ing his time at East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, he was the assis­tant poet­ry edi­tor for Wil­low Springs. He was a final­ist for the 2016 MBF emerg­ing writ­ers con­test, and his work has appeared or is forth­com­ing in The Get­tys­burg Review, Mis­souri Review: Poem of the Week, Crab Creek Review, Fugue, and The Mead­ow, among others.