The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

by Julie Sheehan

It’s Valentine’s, no time to window-gaze.
Across the way a woman leans westward,
smoking; another, two windows up and over,
steps back and shoulders her bag in one swift move.

Ready to go somewhere. And can they hear
the amateur saxophonist on the street
below, halting out “Moon River”? And can
they bear it? Valentine’s, no time to practice.

No time for alacrity lacked on instruments.
I can stay angry for hours at a simmer,
explosive and chilly like an elaborate sauce.
The low sun flares up, glazing bricks to burnt orange,

windows to metal, then sinks as unambitious
browns assert themselves and rooms yield depths
to the sun’s off-angle. Interiority
instructs me: turn on all the lights.

The saxophonist stumbles into the theme
from The Odd Couple and I swear to myself
I am not making this up. I will make up,
buy roses, call the office where your blinds

divulge through elegant Venetian slats
the fumarole: a Hudson lit to boiling
gold and, banking it, a Jersey kilned
adobe. Hues both poisonous and gorgeous.

***

I picked up Julie Sheehan’s new(-ish) book, Orient Point, at the most iconic and satisfying bookstore I’ve ever entered: City Lights, in San Francisco, owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. They had an entire level devoted to poetry, half of which was Beat poetry, with signs all over that said “Sit down and read a book.” I did just that and found myself marveling at Sheehan’s subtle authority over the page. I’m particularly impressed by household objects’ full presence as characters in the scene along with the speaker. Sheehan manages to engage with the scene itself as well as the people in it, all “poisonous and gorgeous.”

I’ll be back at Amherst in less than a week. Expect regular posts then. Right now I’ve written this poetry post to celebrate finishing my thesis proposal and express my unbridled excitement for the year ahead.