Poem of the Week

Beginning of September

Chloe Honum

Texas, 2021

I threw up so forcefully that it knocked the bucket from my hands.

When I stood, I swayed.

In the shower, looking down under running water,

I whispered, grow, grow.

My dog kept watch. Always so close.

Always facing out toward the door.

She is the gold inside my aura.

The sorrow to come was completely its own shape,

and made worse by the obsession of strangers,

circling it madly. Dizzying me.

I held fast to the name I chose.

With my eyes closed, crying felt like running, lost,

in pounding rain.

The Yale Review · "Beginning of September" by Chloe Honum

Can you describe one formal realization or change you made during the writing of the poem?

During the writing of this poem, I found a form that I’ve since written several more poems in: couplets leading to a solitary final line. I’ve found that a new subject often requires a new form, and not a lot can happen until I find it. This form, with its lonely last line, spoke to me of bereavement. I also found that the varied line lengths of the couplets gave me the sense of a more open, non-rigid space to write into.

Chloe Honum is a New Zealand-American poet and the author of two books, The Lantern Room and The Tulip-Flame, and a chapbook, Then Winter.

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