You have bought the wrong light bulbs again— too bright this time. This time you brought the receipt but first you travel the well-lit aisle of lighting fixtures. There’s a notice about a ban on fluorescence which reminds you of Ben’s offer for a bioluminescence paddle in the Salish Sea. You want that— to glide out into a wash of light, stars and sea bedazzled. But here in the West Seattle True Value, you are confused by wattage, the question of dimming and LED. How many hours of light should you expect? The time changed this week and you hustle home to walk the dog before nightfall, his vision dimming with age. In the dark, he runs into lamp posts even as they cast a glow and as the neighbors’ televisions pulse a spectrum of the evening news, the wars brightening their big screens. You can see into their living rooms—in a way you never do during the long summer evenings when you wave to one another, stop to chat about the weather. Walking the dog in the gloaming, you feel an unexpected tenderness for your neighbors, a desire to enter their darkened rooms and sit beside them watching the televised world. Maybe you would be silent together. Or perhaps, someone would turn on a light, offer a glass of wine. You want that— to be a reason for light.
Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of the 2022 The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize in Poetry. She is the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. Recent work in Blackbird, Brevity, Copper Nickel, diode, Financial Times of London, Penn Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Plume, Rattle, and elsewhere. Heidi holds an MFA from NYU.
4/10 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
4/10 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills + local writer Jennifer Litt / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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Just gorgeous! So many tender and lovely surprises rising up out of the gathering darkness. I love it!