the blueshift journal
blueshift / ˈblo͞oˌSHift / noun
the displacement of the spectrum to shorter wavelengths in the light coming from distant celestial objects moving toward the observer.
~ C H I C A G O ~
Aricka Foreman
writer
Humorism
​
Night-alone in the beautiful borrowed house I vow never to watch another horror film Where the
woman squeaks a dish clean sings braless between Joplin’s threshold-throat, pleads lord work
not to leave her here down in it She mouths a bow on a handsaw, thin and tinned, her water on
metal cutting through Birch limbs drop appendage after pine cones mimic ghost-fists on a dinner
table The driver says What a perfect place to be murdered and laughs Outside the dark sea
skirts its fog-hem just beyond the dim glow of porch light I am almost always afraid No humor in
the tea leaves Almost always a body of little white pills to sleep or swim in it Suck the songs
back when Sandra and Renisha and Korryn Sleep comes and does good or the bad dreams
scatter like black mollusks along a Massachusetts sea shore The hole keeps our music all horse
hair pulled taught on the wind-bough bend metal with teeth It’s cool, keep it Rinse the silver
pans until they creak and moan Wipe the counters smooth Tuck in Keep a night stand light on
Be a mother-figure with a maldescent faucet to drink from Be the bridge rot breakable, no
discernable beam left Click down Quick switch back Don’t say her name Say her name, a wish
that Maybe they’d say mine though Only inferred punch Line break Bone broke Say it I dare you
Of the Question of Self and How It Never Quite Gets Answered
You forgo the intake
eye-gulp the green pallor of the sky,
forget the brain’s bad math.
The neighborhood children not yet broken,
run through the rain’s needles like they’re free.
Doesn’t the day like any other show up
in a moth eaten gown,
champagne in a coupe, toasting.
Of the dead it carries whether
or not it was asked, the interrogatives pile up
like winged beetles around a lemon of light.
Even the gnats float around the pulp—
citrus meat, simple syrup and bourbon behind
the hound’s face on the mason jar—
sacrifice their daze for something aural.
The soft unsnapping of my bra at the day’s end is a small relief.
To drift in and out of sleep. A buoy against this.
Living through. I snarl outside the fence of the henhouse.
And not pluck one feather. Devour this hunger and weary.
No sucker emcees please, no prance about. I want the teeth.
I’m soft for a feral reclamation. Breath wild, heaving.
price of today’s ticket
quarters for a coinstar receipt
for canned tuna and fresh dill,
for crockpot miracles of beans
and roots seasonally cheap,
for ramen and a half-dozen eggs
for chives, a handful of greens
bread for the pantry supply of
peanut butter, for the eggs
again over-easy and again scrambled
or sometimes poached if I want
to get real middle class with it,
for an apple, or one pear, though,
when the empty in me tries again
at the grainy meat sanding against
my water’s mouth, I remember how
little regard I have for the fruit
except for what it can do for me
some days I can’t be more American
or more idealistic than buying books
instead of dinner when a pound of
coffee can warm my belly for a week
when they say there are few things
more rude than discussing money
or politics over dinner, I think they
must’ve been unimpressed with the
excess on their tables, where I come
from a scraped fork on a plate is a praise
song of turning nothing into some-
exquisite-thing licked clean from the finger
Attempting to negotiate this space between the infinite inquiry and vulnerability, of stasis and observation, are where these writings lie. Given that the reader is not jury but witness, there's not much to confess. So much calls me to be brave. But I have to face and give face to and deface the fears that keep me launching forward as I give into the everyday pleasures that ask me to lean in and listen with fervor, listen for anti-answers.
Aricka Foreman’s work has appeared in The Drunken Boat, Minnesota Review, RHINO, Day One, Phantom, shuf Poetry, James Franco Review, thrush, Vinyl, PLUCK!, and Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation by Viking Penguin, among others. She is the author of Dream With A Glass Chamber from YesYes Books and the Art co-editor at The Offing. Originally from Detroit, she currently lives in Chicago.