Shorn, treaded red

^{after “Satellites 27” by Etel Adnan}

ochre starts
commence       catalyst and evensong enters
           
a flame lit arched and yearn
gleam, twofold

weary but not from this life
in time flame begets pools of
shorn Decembers
limber months evade us
            the flood
begets
burnished

catalyst and a hem
treaded red, quaked

slide gleam and slide trifold
            mirroring the fresh lake whirring
mirroring the whirring shorn wave

11 nocturnes
            you fibonacci
you catacomb

Copyright © 2022 by Asiya Wadud. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 22, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“In a Fibonacci sequence, each sum builds upon the previous equation. Etel Adnan’s work reminds me of a Fibonacci in this particular way. I am drawn to the ways in which her poems, paintings, tapestries, and leporellos make evident a lineage, thread, and lifelong excavation of what mattered most to Adnan. I wrote ‘Shorn, treaded, red’ after visiting some of Adnan’s paintings last winter. This poem is meant to speak to the luster and circular logic I saw in Adnan’s ‘Satellites 27’ but also, given the moment in which it was written, it is an opening to something more elegiac.”
—Asiya Wadud