Adam Giannelli

UM, UH

As if breath were a shell, a shield. The body
sheltered by its own exhalation. I say it when
thinking of what to say. It is that moment

of staring across the broad sea, before
any inkling of earth. Not ohm, but something
is conducted. Beneath every conversation

in a restaurant, every phone call, lies a spool
of breath and suites of blood. And neither om,
but yes, a mantra, spoken again and again,

as if to soothe. Sometimes uh, almost an article.
Or er, erratic. So stairwells have banisters.
So houses, beds. So an arm has a fold at the elbow.

So in the far corner rests a glass of water. Even
in the voice, a sabbath. As the traffic thins and light
fades on the far wall—as the crowds along

the water disperse until only a few figures
at the end of the pier, like outlying stars, remain—
I offer up this sound that approximates night.

So on the window, frost. On my worst days,
I’m all seam and mending. Through the checkout lines,
I move in increments and human pieces. And so

do you, just with your own particular lather.
There is no forgiveness in smooth, but a wrinkle
can forgive, a turned head or bitten nail—any

valley, anything that admits air. This sudden
spasm is not a vacancy, but an insistence, like
a hand pressed hard to the sternum,

that something lies within. The mouth says,
the length of a sidewalk and this ad hoc daylight.
Says, long weekends and strawberry leaves,

all sorts of triads. Says, foxgloves. Says, umbral.
And all the while it pauses to mark where it says.
Sometimes a breath is the best description.

ADAM GIANNELLI is the author of Tremulous Hinge (University of Iowa Press, 2017), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, New York Times Magazine, and Ploughshares. He is a person who stutters.