Synonyms by Adele Evershed
I listen to the words of a dead poet, read by a live one over Zoom. Apparently, he died last week, and we are now forced to think about the deceased, about him buried in the words or the spaces he left behind. Then the poet asks us to make a list of synonyms for all the nouns in our poem she asked us to bring to her workshop. A white-haired woman, blinks through over-large glasses, she seems a little confused as she asks, “Who is dead?” The poet says his name slowly and suggests she looks him up on Wikipedia. Then she says we can write our most interesting phrase from our poems in the chat and she leaves the screen blank as she gives us five minutes to compile our list.
I use the Thesaurus and wonder if that’s cheating.
Empathy-pity, cottoning on
Horror-dread, disquietude
Feel-endure, suffer
Dawn-lightening, inception
Out of the void the poet’s disembodied voice shouts out random phrases from the chat, ‘God’s fish hooks,’ and ‘jelly bean daiquiri.’ Then, she flashes back on screen saying, “Words have their own history like ‘vegetable,’ which was created in 1582”. Suddenly everything seems insurmountable. I add ‘abandon’ to my list though it’s not in my poem. Abandon–cease, pull the plug, end.
She continues, “Now, in the dictionary, ‘vegetable’ has over thirty-six meanings or flavors.” I think she’s making a joke, so I laugh but it sounds more like a bark. A breathy voice says, “Can everyone mute, please?”
There is a loud wailing; the poet says, “Sorry about the sirens. I live near a hospital.” And there they are again, the dead intruding on the living.
On screen, the white-haired woman takes off the glasses that made her look like an owl in a children’s book, and she lets out a guttural sound, as if she’s communing with her ghosts. And then with a creeping dread, I realize–that woman is me.
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Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her prose and poetry have been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies such as Every Day Fiction, Grey Sparrow Journal, High Shelf, Reflex Fiction, Shot Glass Journal, and Hole in the Head Review. Adele has recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry, and the Staunch Prize for flash fiction. Her first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places is available from Finishing Line Press ( link here ).
Illustration by Nicola Bebb – bebbnicola
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