Ars poetica
this week (start here) this bare and ruined week,
this choir week, this bird week, this west, this take-away —
*
I used to say lodestone — I thought there’d be one —
a counterpoint — and terrors is not too strong a word —
I thought it might be possible to focus
on the leaves: yellow, some, none, few,
hanging — why is not too strong a question —
why — why — why — I thought it would stop
*
the chorus says didn’t we almost and it’s terrible
*
sometimes words rattle around inside, like a cypher
*
I was born a color — say umber — I was born without a gift
for numbers — I was born without hot water — I didn’t invent
for hours and hours — say by a harbor — then say
the view from the hills was mineral — when I was born,
they called me barn, my name confounded —
say I was born to make a statement about nativity —
what to leave out? — the birds had blue around their eyes —
the harbor yawned — the shrieks that woke me
were probably from a small animal in terrible pain —
I was born highly visible because of thinning leaves —
I was born retrospective — no, like this
Chiyuma Elliott is the author of Vigil (2017) and California Winter League (2015). Her poems have appeared in the African American Review, Callaloo, the Notre Dame Review, the PN Review, and other journals. A former Stegner and Cave Canem Fellow, Chiyuma teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.