"Poetry went cold this summer..."
September 8th, 2021
Poetry went cold
this summer.
The days
wouldn’t translate
into a phrase.
The world
was what reached
through the weather
I was under.
My mind mirrored
a room
vibrating at night
in cricket-dense quiet.
All that’s left
of summer:
a cloud deck skims
the top
off a mountain
and a sun-bleached
lottery ticket
snagged by prongs
of Russian sage
tongues
the chlorinated air.
I think we can all relate to when “The days wouldn’t translate into a phrase”—when fragile hopes and desired plans are translated into loss too wrenching to articulate even to ourselves, and we must surrender to grace. I appreciate the tension cultivated in your precision of phrase in conveying pain that resists naming.
When you don’t recognize the sound of your own voice, when someone/something has been messing with the gravity switch again, dialing it up 3 notches…who is still noticing the skimming clouds, the snagging prongs, the sharp smell of chlorine? 🌬️☁️