Poetry by Amanda Hayden influenced by Depeche Mode

Bio: Hayden is Poet Laureate and Professor of Humanities, receiving the Professor of the Year and League for Innovation Teaching Excellence Awards. Her chapter, Saunter Like Muir, was published in Eco pedagogies: Practical Approaches to Experiential Learning (2022). Additionally, many of her poems have been published in literary journals, in both print and online.She lives on a farm with her family with dogs, cats, goats, pigs, chickens, and a duck named Dorothy.  

Memento Mori

As a kid, you put your tongue-tied
faith in crashing waves, hidden

street shadows of broken vows

You put it in harmful, violent
words, wasted truth, red

velvet, trivial tea for two

You put it in adobe prayers,
believers, theory forgivers

flesh and bone pay the price

Now, you put it in your golden
crown of silence, lessons learned

a place to sit still in the snow