Julie Benesh ~ Neologistics

There must be a word
for it: wak­ing up in the
night iden­ti­fy­ing a bounded,
dis­crete, yet repeated
phe­nom­e­non, so profound
and obvi­ous you don’t need
to write it down, but yell
it loud in your head
so as not to wake
the neigh­bors, or the cats
(who wake any­way) and in the morning
you feel com­plete, the lake
a still, sculpt­ed carpet,
and you don’t remember
the sub­stance of the original
phe­nom­e­non, but only the wrapper,
the skin, the occasion,
which you decide to call,
for now: discernight,
or epipharal.

~

Julie Benesh is author of the chap­book About Time and the forth­com­ing full-length poet­ry col­lec­tion Initial Conditions and has pub­lished work in Tin House, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Another Chicago Magazine, JMWW, Maudlin House, and else­where. She is a grad­u­ate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program and recip­i­ent of an Illinois Arts Council Grant. Read more at juliebenesh.com.