Hangover By Kent Fielding

As a young man, I used to tell people

All good things involve sweat 

And of course, I meant workouts

And spicy food, and sex 

(Skin upon skin, steam bath-like rooms,

Damp hair, the taste of salt on the tongue,

Wrestling, moaning, collision rough sweat).

I suppose I even meant hangovers.

I used to find satisfaction in those after-mornings.

The survival of poison, the body’s ability

To remove toxins, to purify itself

With its own water – holy perhaps. 

As all survival is holy.

Kent Fielding – educator, editor, poet, activist – co-founded White Fields Press and the literary renaissance with Ron Whitehead in 1992. Fielding is an Honorary Kentucky Colonel, a BP Teacher of Excellence, an Alaska Teacher of the Year Finalist, 2021 Alaska Speech and Debate Coach of the Year. He has taught in the Marshall Islands, at Jefferson Community College, University of Alaska Southeast, Mt. Edgecumbe, Skagway High School, and at summer institutes in Turkey and Latvia. Author of a book of poetry, Chief Iffuccan, a chapbook, The Revolution is About to Begin, and a broadside “Museums” (Cheek Press 2023), his work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Asheville Poetry Review, The Jefferson Review, Pavement Saw, Modern Haiku, The Beat Scene, Frisk Magazine, Boog Literature, Night Owl Narrative: A Cajun Mutt Rag, and Tidal Echoes, among others.