Autumnal
Adrian Blevins | Poetry
So here we go again with the fundamentally unjust Octoberness of August
with the trees going so schizoid so early & commencing, thus,
to really fuck with my need for more time to think whippoorwill & loon
& even write that rhythm down like sound can murder death
when really what this is is the 21st century & what we need is a real revolutionary—
an “I” so subversive it’s a mute doing pantomime down at the rodeo
or a dog with her toggle all jabbed out, her lunkybumbly muffle of a walk-on
kind of catatonic & overloud yes I guess but at least not inaudible.
Whacky maybe sure I guess but not doornail. Not deadfall. Not yet!
with the trees going so schizoid so early & commencing, thus,
to really fuck with my need for more time to think whippoorwill & loon
& even write that rhythm down like sound can murder death
when really what this is is the 21st century & what we need is a real revolutionary—
an “I” so subversive it’s a mute doing pantomime down at the rodeo
or a dog with her toggle all jabbed out, her lunkybumbly muffle of a walk-on
kind of catatonic & overloud yes I guess but at least not inaudible.
Whacky maybe sure I guess but not doornail. Not deadfall. Not yet!
Adrian Blevins’s most recent book of poetry is Status Pending (Four Way Books, 2023), winner of the 2024 Maine Literary Awards for Poetry. Her other full-length collections are Appalachians Run Amok, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, and The Brass Girl Brouhaha. She also co-edited Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean, a collection of essays by new and emerging Appalachian writers, and is the recipient of many additional awards and honors including the Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.