Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2026.
No Word, poems by Sally Bliumis-Dunn.
No Word
I stand in your old room
looking out the window
at the tall white pines,
amethyst geode in my hand
purple, crystal, round, hard, small.
The silence between us
taints even the momentary quiet.
Every word I know is ailing,
even these simple descriptions
of a rock. No idea where you live.
No word from you in months.
I wash the breakfast dishes, fold
the basket of rumpled clothes,
sleeve, stripes, socks, lint—words,
words. None of them yours.
Which ones will you choose at last
to look for me, to seek my inner ear,
vibrating the bone.
No way I can know.
To me all words are like strangers now.
I pass then on the street
and look deep in their faces—
a tilting head, a wisp of curl—
not one of them yours.
Seychelles Reef
Scientists record sounds
from healthy reefs, then play
them underwater in the corridors
of lifeless coral.
When the fish who once lived there
hear these sounds, they return to their home
but there is no life—
coral, conch, and sea fan,
blanched—the seared
white of hospital sheets—
Not even tiny zebra fish
flitter on the bottom.
Transgression
Lily stems gather
in the vase’s narrow throat
and spread out wide on the clear glass bottom
like the sticks the three of us would use
to make a tepee in the woods
with the old bedsheet we’d drag outside.
My brother would fasten clothespins
to hold it all in place.
Inside we’d sit cross-legged in a circle,
our faces dulled in the gray light
which made us feel less bound
to ourselves and more
at ease to share our secrets
I can still feel my sister’s
hand cupped against my ear,
her warm breath carrying
the unspeakable.
© Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches at The 92nd Street Y and is Associate Editor at-large for Plume Poetry. Her poems appeared in Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, PLUME, Poetry London, the NYT, PBS NewsHour, among others. In 2002, she was a finalist for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. Her latest book, Echolocation, was published by Plume Editions/MadHat Press, 2018. Her forthcoming book, Weather Report, is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press in 2026.