Name Withheld
The Level Eye
Far above the malleable half-rib floater,
a sudden unexpected pain
skitters where the skin curve of the fifth rib
builds a parking lot
and the left breast rises toward moonish
areolar light.
A magnetic jolt? The deadly current
that electrifies the eel? And from my mouth
a cramped unnatural squeal or cry, as if I
were the only woman left
with two small breasts, a steady heart with two
varieties of song: beat
and beaten, hark and harkens, whole and holy.
Listen. The cricket cannot halt
his call. It owns him. Any regret
you hear is mine. He wraps himself around
the knot of that single note and shines
and when the shining stops, he’s gone. (It’s over.)
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Praise for Name Withheld
“Name Withheld is the dark side of confession’s moon, where privacy deepens because utterance—rich and elusive—reproves the voyeur, withholds what it must. Language hunts what is nocturnal, difficult to spot, heady with contradiction, dissonance, dismay, unmappable, yet moving at the core, her lines like the meteor’s tail, gesturing back to the heart of the radiant.”
– Eleanor Wilner
“In Lisa Sewell’s new book of poems, Name Withheld, she asks: what could be done, what could I do? The answer is this book itself. Brilliantly energetic, emotionally tough and intellectually engaging, this book-as-answer is a daring, powerful kind of poetics, a feminist poetics, a gendered engagement with the world—as if Emily Dickinson’s transforming skills were suddenly seen as a way of saving the world.”
– Bin Ramke
Lisa Sewell’s Name Withheld is also fascinating work . . . deeply humane, and feminist; challenging and imaginatively inventive.
– Stride Magazine