Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
Richard Siken
“Metonymy” is one of the seventy seven poems included on Richard Siken’s third collection, I Do Know Some Things. It was first published on the October 2023 Issue of the Poetry Foundation along with “Sidewalk”.
Official cover of the Issue
Someone wheeled me to the curb. A different friend helped me into a car. We got to the condo and managed to get me down the stairs, into the living room, where I fell asleep on a mattress we put on the floor. I slept, I peed myself, I fell off the mattress, I fell out of chairs talking wildly. I scared them, whoever they were, the people I was supposed to know. I knew who Jamеs was, he was on the phone. Hе was in California. You can’t stay there. You have to go to the hospital. You can go to a different hospital. I changed my clothes. It was like dressing a mannequin. Getting into the car, I fell on the emergency brake and broke my glasses. In the emergency room, at the second hospital, the woman at the desk said Oh no, you’ve had a stroke, and they wheeled me in. The doctor was handsome and it embarrassed me. For a while, I was talking to a brightness in the corner of the room. When they tried to give me a Heparin shot I threw a bedpan. I kept asking for someone, over and over—the friend who took me to the first hospital. I said black tree when I meant night. I said The branches blow and we sleep in dirt. I said Telephone. Safe harbor. Perhaps you are, perhaps you are diamonds.
Metonymy was written by Richard Siken.