and everything beneath
our feet
is open for a second
the next general strike
to end all general
strikes
is at the helm of a siren
out west
pointe is in
the horizon
and out of touch
at the point there is
a playable field
a delicate blur
a line of empty vessels
an empty line of
vacation homes
a dead seal
down
below (“acid west”)
I’m
fascinated at
California-based fahima ife’s self-declaration as a “devotional lyrical
poet,” a phrase included in the author biography for her second full-length
collection,
Septet for the Luminous Ones (Middletown CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 2024), a collection that follows her full-length debut,
Maroon Choreography (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2021). One might attempt to
seek clarification on whether she is devotional and a lyric poet or a poet of
the devotional lyric, but I might suspect she a combination of the two,
offering a lyric of sound and cadence, gestures that leap off the page in
performance. These are poems that don’t simply require to be heard aloud, but
manage to present themselves on the page as performance. “dust a distal broom
corners vestibular inquisition number seven / vernacular insinuation number
nine” begins the poem “of spirit, artificial symbiont,” “a blue dust pan / a
dusty flute song
a boy in love
// a staggering impulse to burn / then turn the fleeting lust as funk [.]” ife’s
language offers such vibrancy, a propulsive and delightful oscillation and pause
and choral that speaks of and to and through the very notion of devotion, heart
and a hush, afterlife and time, desire and ritual, trauma and celebration,
seeking to expand the light and lift up the dark. “what is the word / for the
thing // like a traumatic / brain injury,” she writes, to open the poem “afterlife
of the party, the order of time,” “not involving a / physical blow / to the
head // but a sensual blow / to locale of sense // of being in time / and space
/ beyond / limits [.]” Through these lines, it would be impossible to not feel
lifted.
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