Go in Abstraction by Sevens with Adverbs
by Brenda Yates
You are meant to get lost here
among words in a country
of words--diaphanous words
holding a plea against some
wretched, hard reality,
against precision’s pinned-down
rage minutely dissecting
one more hapless pain, against
edgy acid ironies
lying uneasily on
open satin-lined caskets--
imprecise words (joy/hope/love)
suspending death, that lifeblood
of being alive. Words that
see into the life of things,
brook the way one of childhood’s
long summer days lets go its
miracles: steady but some-
how faintly glimmering like
imaginary birds that
might be souls, spirits or tricks
of light. You, me, all of us
vulnerable as any
naked thing born of burned-out
stars (or more correctly: of
resurrected celestial
energy) slowly rowing
our nameless selves as if we
were ghostly sculls noisily
slapping our inexpert oars
out of a fog bank into
the near clarity of in-
definable star-thick nights.
Brenda Yates is a prize-winning author of the collection Bodily Knowledge (Tebot Bach). Her work has appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Mississippi Review, City of the Big Shoulders: Chicago Poetry (University of Iowa Press),) as well as journals in Australia, China, England, India, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands and Portugal. “Go in Abstraction by Sevens with Adverbs” first appeared in Bending Genres.
by Brenda Yates
You are meant to get lost here
among words in a country
of words--diaphanous words
holding a plea against some
wretched, hard reality,
against precision’s pinned-down
rage minutely dissecting
one more hapless pain, against
edgy acid ironies
lying uneasily on
open satin-lined caskets--
imprecise words (joy/hope/love)
suspending death, that lifeblood
of being alive. Words that
see into the life of things,
brook the way one of childhood’s
long summer days lets go its
miracles: steady but some-
how faintly glimmering like
imaginary birds that
might be souls, spirits or tricks
of light. You, me, all of us
vulnerable as any
naked thing born of burned-out
stars (or more correctly: of
resurrected celestial
energy) slowly rowing
our nameless selves as if we
were ghostly sculls noisily
slapping our inexpert oars
out of a fog bank into
the near clarity of in-
definable star-thick nights.
Brenda Yates is a prize-winning author of the collection Bodily Knowledge (Tebot Bach). Her work has appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Mississippi Review, City of the Big Shoulders: Chicago Poetry (University of Iowa Press),) as well as journals in Australia, China, England, India, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands and Portugal. “Go in Abstraction by Sevens with Adverbs” first appeared in Bending Genres.