Weekly Poem: ‘From the Grandiloquent Dictionary’

By Hailey Leithauser

Judder

When Junk gives a shudder, like a tractor
more quaint than intact, like lapsed reactors,
pipes worn and contorted, a Toyota
that’s done for, or outdated aorta.

Katzenjammer

Think of the yowl of three senile felines.
Think of a buzz saw’s black, sauerkraut whine.
Imagine ten screeched, unleashed violins.
Imagine the dawn that follows the gin.

Metrophobia

I, too dislike it, or at least I find
too much of it bromidic and unrhymed,
muffled in a fog of cottony prose,
frightened of shadows or stepping on toes.

Hailey Leithauser’s poetry has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Poetry and in the Best American Poetry and Best New Poets anthologies. Her first book, “Swoop,” won the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson First Book Award. That collection will be published in October.