17 Nov What It Sometimes Sounds Like She Is Singing by Ariel Yelen
a sprig of thyme,
when it’s oil.
A field of vision tinted blue,
a galleon-like moon.
It’s you, and your death means
my death. The metal feeling that comes
with the change in weather
familiar as the smell
of an apple core.
The present is a realm we’d miss.
Clouds move with the wind,
snakes hiss.
I know someone who tells stories of his life
not like a poet but like a salesman
well-practiced in the hazardous technique
of pleasing others—selling people on himself.
As if a box is charming.
As if by love we ever mean
replay it all for us but wittier!
But you, you would never do this—
you would instead go off with the story
wandering
and it would end
or not, and later you’d apologize (or not)
for having gone off so far.
Your story not contingent
on my listening,
but eternal
for it’s the story of my birth
all the way to my death.
When it snows,
a check mark goes green
somewhere inside me, as though it’s the season
of my ancestors, as though they had
the same dream.
About the Poet
Ariel Yelen (photo credit Theo Cote)
Ariel Yelen is the author of I Was Working (Princeton University Press, 2024), selected by Rowan Ricardo Phillips for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. She received a 2023-2024 Creative & Performing Arts Fulbright to Greece, as well as fellowships / grants from Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, The Yiddish Book Center, Art Farm & Arte Studio Ginestrelle. She’s taught poetry and interdisciplinary courses for Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers New Brunswick, The Loft Literary Center, & Mana Contemporary. As a former editor for the NYC-based publishing collaborative Futurepoem Books, she founded their digital space futurefeed. She studied sculpture & video at SUNY Purchase & poetry at Rutgers-Newark. She lives and works in New York City. This poem originally appeared in Conjunctions in 2019.
Related Event
- Ariel Yelen will join with poet, writer, and translator Laura Marris and musician Whitetails (aka Jonathan Bobowicz) at the next Just Buffalo Presents reading and performance at 7:30 p.m. Friday, November 22 at Just Buffalo Literary Center, 468 Washington St., 2nd Floor in Buffalo. The event is free and open to the public.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.