Against Specificity
by Virginia Kane

Hanif says never put a bird in a poem
without saying what kind of bird.

I want to agree. I like my blues
cerulean, my clouds cumulonimbus.

I prefer my mountains baptized
and my rivers carved with names.

Your reader will find you
in the details, everyone says,

but when I write about memory
I am just writing about loss.

Here, I forget to tell
the flowers you brought me

they are irises. I decide
the dogwoods we laid under

are just those trees. The months
I knew you, crisp and labeled,

all become that year.
When you leave,

I christen nothing.
I call it what it wasn’t.

---

Virginia Kane is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in them., The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, The Florida Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina where she works at an independent bookstore.