A Poem by July Westhale

Author: Poetry Editor

January 9, 2019

This week, a poem by July Westhale.



+ and –

I’ll apologize now if it’s not untoward but I would

like to say on an afternoon like this that you are perfect

in a way obscurity never made you. It’s just that

in this day and age, it is a mark against to talk

about light, what it is and what it is not but please,

California has been in drought so very long

(like us). Which should in no way be taken except to take it

as a lack (and now it is not). It’s just that you may

mistake this and think I am looking

to make a point about you personally, or your personage

(a point that is really a never-ending line, which is

a circle). Admittedly, that is an odd way to phrase it,

+ and -. To cut out all that it isn’t and give you

(nothing) everything else. Take this sorry

mouth as a negative space of infinites. Forgive me this afternoon.

——

JULY WESTHALE is the award-winning author of Via Negativa, Trailer Trash (selected for the 2016 Kore Press Book Prize), The Cavalcade, and Occasionally Accurate Science. Her most recent poetry can be found in The National Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, CALYX, Rappahannock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, RHINO, Lunch Ticket, and Quarterly West. Her essays have been nominated for Best American Essays and have appeared in McSweeney’s, Autostraddle, and The Huffington Post. She is the 2018 University of Arizona Poetry Center Fellow. www.julywesthale.com