‘Semantics’
— Hannah Cohen
however you choose to say it,
she was tired, she entered the summer night
I have been thinking about how we say things. How certain phrases and euphemisms become ingrained in our languages. I do not have the answers and cannot tell you how to describe them. Perhaps we need to look at Leila Chatti’s new poem ‘Semantics’ and see how we can approach the turning of life intangible. The two lines per stanza create silence and space, letting each action and description inhale and exhale naturally (see: “like a coat in winter, but / it was August when she stole // her life”). This is a poem that refracts light into several shards, and every time you see something different and new.