5 Words I’m in Love with Right Now and Want to Use in a Poem

by a contributor

from Kathleen Brewin Lewis, author of Ars Poetica, Sort Of:

  1. gravid – 1. Pregnant, carrying eggs or young. 2. Full of meaning or a specified quality. A weighty word for a world of possibility.
  2. facsimile (as opposed to a regular simile) – a copy. But why say something with two syllables when you could say it with four?
  3. pierce – go into or through. Picture a silver needle and scarlet thread pushed through a taught hoop of white cotton. Consider its alliterative synonyms: puncture, penetrate, perceive, permeate. Linger on the ultimate sibilance.
  4. conjure – make (something) appear unexpectedly or seemingly from nowhere as if by magic. Isn’t this what poets are supposed to do?
  5. sumac – a flowering tree of the cashew family with red fruit and feathery leaves. Because this earth is full of particulars and I want to be able to name as many of them as I possibly can.