Adam Abecedarian by Susan Vespoli

Adam Abecedarian

by Susan Vespoli

Adam has

become a

               c l o u d

  dances biblical

excerpts

      feet and toes

  going 

       high &   low

in his shoeless    body-less

     jig       as I sit in the

kitchen at 4:00 a.m.

lamenting loss.

My son

      no longer

           on the physical

                  plane.

Quiet here in this 

room where

so many years ago, he carved a 

turkey.             Today

            under

       vast

              watch of the sky,      he is ash   an

X.          Axed from life      by a

young bully cop–            three bullets

zipped from gun    to neck     to zero breath.

This Arizona poet lost her son--who had pulled himself up from addiction--to gun violence; the perpetrator was a police officer. (You can read an interview with Susan Vespoli, here, where she discusses what led up to that tragic murder.)

If this were a regular free verse poem, the story would be heartbreaking, and the poem would be a great read. But Vespoli has created a abecedarian poem, which is a poem that starts each new line with words in alphabetical order, from A to Z. This form can be tricky and very difficult to write well. Vespoli does it here.

"Adam has become a cloud" is a beautiful way to refer to someone who is dead. It evokes nature, as well as the religious image, often imagined by Christian children, of heaven.

After placing Adam, the speaker places herself, physically, and then in a memory with Adam--the kitchen (stanza 1) and years ago (stanza 3). The 3rd stanza, where some joy in a happy memory existing, a memory in which Adam is alive, is the least jagged, as far as form. In the other stanzas, Adam is no longer alive, and the speaker's pain comes through not only in words and images, but in the broken up form.

In the very short 4th stanza, we return to the sky, but Adam is not longer a cloud. He is ash.

We move quickly to stanza 5 where Adam is an X. Using both ash and X, we are told the story of his murder, beginning with the word "axed." Three lines--this amazing poet conveys the story of a murder in just 3 lines.

I also admire how Vespoli uses "y" twice in its line, and does the same with the letter "z."

young bully

zipped from gun    to neck     to zero breath

Again, these poems are really tough to do well. I cannot think of one I have read that I did not care for. These poems must combine--as all poems do--a point with detailed images. On top of that, they must start each line in alphabetical order! Hats off to all! But this poem? The subject matter mixed with the form makes it especially powerful.

This poem was originally published in Anti-Heroin Chic in 2022, and you can read it there by clicking https://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/poetry-by-susan-vespoli7461426.