Christopher Ankney
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christopherankney.bsky.social
Christopher Ankney
@christopherankney.bsky.social
Husband and father. Tenured community college professor. 1st gen college grad. MFA. 1st book: Hearsay (WWPH). Celiac, anxiety, depression. Editor: Connections Literary Magazine. Forthcoming in Iron Horse and Pleiades.

www.ChristopherAnkney.com
The ending poem in one of my manuscripts is out as the opening poem in the Fall issue of The MacGuffin, and I’m very honored. “What does hope look like?”
August 15, 2025 at 12:54 AM
Home from a wonderful trip with just the wife to find my latest elegy in @pleiadesmag.bsky.social amongst many other fine pieces. I’ve posted two other poets whose work me on first read. #poetry #litmag
June 2, 2025 at 7:25 PM
As a father & native Ohioan, Tamir Rice’s murder at the hands of police is, for me, our contemporary symbol for the ills of US culture. I’m honored and happy to finally share this poem, part of @ironhorselitrev Unlawful Acts (26.2). Please buy&read this magazine & support the amazing list of writers
March 31, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Five years ago today, I wrote my second (and still favorite) pandemic poem after reading of stories of mass death. It was originally published in the online UK’s Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature (panoramajournal.org)
March 28, 2025 at 11:36 AM
The first pandemic poem I wrote. Sharing for the five year anniversary of quarantine.
March 23, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Perhaps my favorite poem I wrote for Hearsay (2014), originally chosen by Claudia Emerson for The Louisville Review:
March 15, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Migratory blue sky.
March 12, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Thinking of this poem since it made its way into a poem
I just drafted: “Kanye West is every poet I’ve ever known…”:
February 24, 2025 at 11:03 PM
I quite enjoy the Poetry Wales’ poems of the day. They’re often delightful in the most sounding ways…Allan Gillis’ “The Return”:
February 24, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Reading book 4 of National Park Mystery Series and recalling the greatness of this summer.
February 17, 2025 at 2:53 AM
Both manuscripts (Dear Irreverence, | the infinite toll (now Palatable Dust)) named semifinalists for the Brittingham/Pollak Prizes. The acknowledgement is encouragement I definitely needed.
February 15, 2025 at 1:50 PM
February 9, 2025 at 2:27 AM
A poem I never submitted. Happy birthday, me:
February 8, 2025 at 10:34 PM
A handful of days before my birthday!

This book is waiting for a sibling, dearest of presses.
February 3, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Fourth lift of the year. Just rejoined the YMCA bc our treadmill broke and I need to get in shape for my back—running alone is not doing it anymore.

Nice sunset you got there, Monday.
February 3, 2025 at 10:48 PM
So I just saw that it is #smallpoemsunday so here’s my shortest poems, written a few years ago:
January 26, 2025 at 11:29 PM
The joke of these fucking jokers. My wife has inferred this article (screenshot) is in the JK Rowling vein of pretending women all want to be trad wives. &…OK, have the opinion, fine, but that the media is highlighting these views as if they’re the standard. And to do anything to gaslight us on him.
January 26, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Thinking again of this final section of Larry Levis’s “For the Country” (from his debut, Wrecking Crew), which has been my mood the past few months:
January 21, 2025 at 12:34 AM
Love this poem, “Bad Habits,” by John McCullough that came through my email yesterday via Poetry Wales listserv:
January 15, 2025 at 2:15 AM
Shared this exactly a year ago. The weather makes resharing today appropriate:
January 7, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Marriage. True love.
January 6, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Goodbye, 2024.
January 1, 2025 at 4:46 PM
The Alma mater treated my hometown college like it was Bama going against Mercer in football 😭 🏀⛹️‍♂️
December 31, 2024 at 1:49 AM
An elegy lyric narrative to my mentor, who died eight years ago. Revisiting the past on a sunny day:
December 30, 2024 at 4:39 PM
Photo editing
December 24, 2024 at 10:28 PM