Kostas Anagnopoulos was born and raised in Chicago. He is the editor and co-founder of Insurance Magazine and Insurance Editions. In 2003 his chapbook Daydream was published. Most recently his poems have appeared in Crowd, New American Writing, Sal Mimeo and Verse. He lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

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Excerpt from Irritant:

1.
Try not to melt too much into letters
Doomed as the language
That colonized us
Hanging many in its wake
Settling our common past
Gathered in a dish
To increase production of arms
A war too
That’s okay because it’s not here
We’re up in the hills

2.
That poem is not a machine
A fluke
Or a laconic statement like I am here by chance
It’s Labor Day, get out and celebrate
You’ve been tied down by jargon long enough
To know who rules you
But you’ll never meet them

3.
I am talking through my father’s hat of course
I owe my first letters to him
What were they?
My gown hooked on a twig
Over a stream
Sit up straight at graduation
Commander of the feet
This pair belongs to the wrong man

4.
I mourn my old address
Once located
My lot is to be uprooted
To go from ointment to ointment
Though I was told otherwise by Sister Elizabeth
Which brings me back to my file
Linking me to a criminal mind
A prism
A politician told me that
And I’d like to add a few lines for the record
Spiraling back, so to speak
To honor our great melting pot

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