Research: Journals
The Journal
Past Issues
26.2
Liz Waldner
Beloved, MerelyThe dictionary suggests I do not need
another word so I put my ‘elbow’ on it.
As in ‘place your bets.’ Is it anywhere
proper to say ‘place your wagers’?
Wages earned by sweat of brow
I note as a way back to the arm
whose fist, also mine, supports the bone
of my cheek. Cheeky. This is what
the British in novels say of a starling.
Or the arms of a charwoman.
Where has that ‘char’ come from?
Coals to Newcastle unavailing.
Charnel ash, to dust we return?
And the star in ‘starling’? The bird
the word itself, an Icelandic root
I found by its picture.
On its page my elbow points to ‘stark’
or, to be accurate, these synonyms:
mere pure absolute entire; dreary drear;
completely. An elbow is drear. A rear
Admiral is better read and a butterfly.
A peacock is the very broad light
of Andalucia at two in June. Stark light
where for company it seems I alone
have Starkville, a town far (I, uh, cry)
from my own in Mississippi
(peacocks cry, too, at first dark on the bayou);
my now stark naked there would be
‘nekkid’ instead and here I give you
the earlier drawing of an apothegm
which just now resembles a sketch of a chair—
“Behold, I show it to you in a mystery”—
to remove surface defects from ingots, blooms
to divest from hallowed character—
and in any word discern the root (en route)
to some (any) where.
