Week of Monday, December 1st, 2025

Fahad Al-Amoudi, in a house with a small body of water

An excellent heartbreak poem!
On the title: I think the speaker is the house, and all this is happening inside of him. My take on this may lose some merit near the end, but that's none of my business.
Vocabulary new to me:
- Jacarandas (noun): a tree native to South America that blooms seasonally with trumpet-shaped lavender-blue flowers.
- Bougainvillea (noun): a woody, thorny vine-shrub native to Brazil that blooms in vibrant warm colors.
I like (that):
- The conversational tone with a straightforward use of conventions, spoken word style.
- The robust presentation as 16 stanzas of 2 lines.
- The liberal use of natural imagery.
- Al-Amoudi uses language to play with physical scale:
  - Lines 2-3: "the jacarandas above... the pond by my feet."
  - Lines 5-6: "a reflection sharpened / by the shade increases the resolution, the depth"
  - Line 9: "this too-close air"
  - Lines 21-22: "cables stretching from bank / to bank"
  - Lines 25-28: "to reach down into the sky, like a man / sifting the riverbed... to find the bottom with the water level / only at my elbow"
- This part: "a detonation / of bright red fuchsias."
- The progression from "a tailless lizard / on a stone wall, a blade of sunlight / resting along its spine" to the question, "Whose tail was I once?" answered by two more questions: "Is all that is good / a casualty before it becomes a virtue? / What is left--this asylum, / my instrument, this crown of evening light?"

This one is about 3 things: temporality & evolution, shared/generational grief, and the self & being or feeling alone.
Vocabulary new to me:
- Sulu is a province of the Philippines.
- Skerries (noun): small rocky islands associated with shipwrecks.
- Atolls (noun): islands formed by volcanic activity, made of a coral reef in a ring around a lagoon.
- Borneo is the third-largest island in the world, located in the Malay Archipelago.
- Intifada (noun): Arabic for "uprising," associated with the Palestinian resistance.
- Columbarium (noun): a structure that holds cremated remains.
I like (that):
- This is spoken word style in a different way than my first selection above, very verbally crunchy and satisfying.
- The structure and use of space, which creates not exactly stanzas but more like associations of lines.
- A lot of separation and indenting is used to script the verbal pace and feel.
- This part: "Black damper, sun-baked. / This fickle sandbar, sickle or grin-shaped."
- This part: "The faces of the drowned were orchids in tar. / The syncopated intifada of their hearts, / life rebelling against death, peals still-- / beneath these waves the silt-writ columbarium."
- All the alliteration: "Borneo birdwing" (line 10), "human hair" (line 11), "pirouetting plume" (line 18).

This poem is about the smallness of one person and the brevity of life. Despite the death imagery, I find this poem light and sweet in tone.
I like (that):
- The lack of periods and capitals (except for "I" pronoun), and the use of dashes, colons, and commas.
- The spaced-out vertical construction and use of line with short, clipped feel.
- The rhythm and verbal flow in the whole thing, but best examples are the first 4 lines: "ice in the grass of want: / queen of leaf- / rot, I've let go-- / after leaf-drop--" and the last 2 lines: "rest--a tomb, a tone, / atone"
- Lessley uses natural imagery around the life cycle to place herself and the meaning of her life in context.
- This part: "blue jays tear at / cells of pulp"

This one is so lovely that it might be a new favorite of all time. It's actually hard to distill it here.
The choice of title is great to me.
Vocabulary new to me:
- Pappus (noun): the botanical structure present in plants like daisies, sunflowers, and dandelions, which aids in spreading seeds.
- Desquamations (noun): the process of skin peeling or shedding.
- Cark (verb): worry.
I like (that):
- It feels so verbally crunchy and satisfying.
- Too many threaded consonant sounds to list off.
- The straightforward use of conventions.
- The simple, easy construction as 12 stanzas of 2 lines, with each stanza's 2 lines being approximately the same length.
- Cordeiro is a master of natural imagery.
- The very fun word choice, especially verbs!
- This part: "a lawnchair's raptured into chrome."
- This part: "Waxwings flock like checkerboards."
- This part: "sunlight fattens on each buttercup."
- All the sandwiches and/or alliteration:
  - Line 1: "Spilled spiders riddle"
  - Line 4: "nearing noon."
  - Line 5: "combs a cowlick"
  - Line 13: "feast on freckled"
  - Line 16: "dapple, lather pasturelands."
  - Line 20: "Grackles cark"
  - Line 22: "goaded into squat. A compact splat"
  - Line 23: "poofs of spoor"
The meaning here is just a pretty straightforward meditation on the beauty and plenty of the world around us. It might be a comment on the life cycle and being present as well.

This is such a good one. I really feel her feelings here.
Referential context:
- The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed to count a year as a second, a century as a minute, and a millennium as an hour. The original artist behind the concept project compares it to looking at a photo of the Earth from space.
- Sobre las Olas means "Over the Waves" in Spanish and is the best-known waltz of the composer Juventino Rosas, published in 1888. Turns out this is that song you usually hear on carousels! Good to know!
Vocabulary new to me:
- Wurlitzer (noun): a pipe organ often used in movie theaters in the 1930s.
I like (that):
- I kind of feel dizzy while I read this.
- The structure as stanzas of 2 mid-length lines, with the second offset/indented.
- The traditional use of punctuation, but adding interest through the use of line.
- The use of time, rhythm, and pace, both through images and style.
- The last part: "Wind in my face, eyes blown closed. / I grip tighter, tighter the gold rope."