Say: A Poem by Jamie O’Halloran

Say it is the furnace clicking,
when the house twips
animal in its walls

Say it is the neighbor
shouting obscenities at his wife;
the epithets, the fence tumbling
honeysuckle you share

Say it is the dog’s nails
needing to be clipped, only you
haven’t a dog

but you listen anyway
to the clatter of dust
coating the hardwood floor

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Author’s Note: My poem “Say” was published in Southern Ocean Review in January 1997. SOR was an online literary magazine out of New Zealand that closed shop (and disappeared from the Web) after its 50th issue in 2009. It was doubly exciting to have my first on-line and international publication in one go. “Say” is one of the only poems I’ve written without punctuation, and since the late ’90s, I use initial caps for all lines. Other than those difference in presentation, my voice is in the sound and imagery of the poem.