Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Forty
by Julia Guez
All the purple flowers,
the way they fall,
white and purple, falling.
See how they turn
their skirts, turning their
white and purple skirts,
so that at least
they fall slowly, make
no sound, beginning soon
to yellow then brown.
Copyright © 2021 by Julia Guez. Used with the permission of the author. Originally published on Queer Poem-a-Day on the Deerfield Public Library Podcast on June 12, 2021.
Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn. Her essays, interviews, fiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in Guernica, POETRY, The Guardian, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, and Kenyon Review. Four Way Books released her first full-length collection, In An Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also A Frame, in 2019; they will release her second book, The Certain Body, in 2022. For the last decade, Guez has worked with Teach For America New York; she’s currently the senior managing director of design and implementation. She also teaches creative writing at NYU and Rutgers. For more: www.juliaguez.net
Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for our series is from Excursions Op. 20, Movement 1, by Samuel Barber, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by a generous donation from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library.