Paige Lewis
Paige Lewis is the author of Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019). Their poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2017, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Paige currently lives and teaches in Iowa City.
I’m Not Faking My Astonishment, Honest
Looking out over the cliff, we’re overwhelmed
by a sky that seems to heap danger upon us. We
end up staring at a single white fluff in the air—
feather, fur, dandelion puff—we don’t care
to define it. The relief of having something
to focus our attention. At home, our patio furniture
unscrews itself under the usual sun. On this trip—
well, I’m not any sadder, I just have more space
for my sadness to fill. I don’t want to give
particulars. A woman huffing up the trail behind
us says to her hiking partner, It wasn’t my size,
but it was only 9 dollars. And now all I want
is to see what it is. The future refuses
to happen, so where else should I turn?
Published:
2023
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2024
Themes:
Mental Health
Literary Devices:
Asyndeton
the absence of a conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so…) between phrases and within a sentence
Dialogue
conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie
Rhetorical Question
a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered
Sonnet
A poem with fourteen lines that traditionally uses a fixed rhyme scheme and meter.