“The character of something.” A Poem by Rebecca Wolff

From the Collection Slight Return

October 20, 2022  By Rebecca Wolff
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the more you listen to it—emerges. Blue

blue, blue, blue
hydrangea

in the shade. Blue, blue, blue, blue
hydrangea. If he could be happy without me I

would leave him there

instantaneously. Dehydrated box
of box turtle deserving your censure. “Me minus you” is

a terrapin homestead,
sales encrypted,
sales diamondback sails

sales—sails—is that what you were trying to tell me, “sails”?
normal speaking voice in tones like consensus on the air when
no one is there there is nothing more intersubjective

than that. We eat

at the same time. Ugly

in the light of day, frontal
in the shade—vibrationally agonistic—

deterministic as a brindle decahedron.

__________________________________

Slight Return

From Slight Return by Rebecca Wolff, published by Wave Books.



Rebecca Wolff
Rebecca Wolff
Rebecca Wolff is the author of five collections of poetry, one novel, and numerous pieces of occasional prose. Her first book, Manderley, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Robert Pinsky. Her second, Figment, was selected for the Barnard Women Poets Prize by Claudia Rankine and Eavan Boland. Her third, The King, was published by W. W. Norton in 2009. One Morning— was published by Wave Books in 2015. Slight Return is out from Wave Books in the fall of 2022. Her novel The Beginners was published by Riverhead in 2011. In 1998, Wolff founded the influential literary journal Fence; in 2001 she founded Fence Books and launched The Constant Critic website. Wolff lives in Hudson, New York, where she has served on the City Council and works in community development, with an emphasis on affordable housing and green trades training.






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