Aubade on the Nature of Emptiness

by Lemmy Ya'akova

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I’m staring down the barrel of a year. I find it easier to speak about how many times a day I wash my hands in the bathroom sink. It’s really you next to me on my sour brown striped couch, and I hesitate to adumbrate my yellow life now that you don’t take up so much space in it. It’s a stale endeavor to yearn. I still answer when called and I push my rock up the hill to die on. I attempt to live with grace in a graceless life, imbibing the words of my heart so that I can keep pace, hopefully, on my journey home to you.  Spellbound by the thicket of falsehood that I ever knew where I was going, I limn this transcendent loss so that maybe it will dissipate.

I’m staring down the barrel of a year. Something is not yet done. The lack of you watches and follows me about, bending pop bottle tabs and resting a hand on my lower back in my sleep. Sharp ultramarine snores tuck themselves into the corners of rooms. When despondence lets itself into my house without knocking, the lack is there to tangle its fingers into the hair at my neck and say, “keep still baby, I’m gunna come.” I can’t stop writhing. 

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A Michigander gone Chicagoan, Lemmy Ya'akova is a genderfluid poet who is known for writing technology generated poetry called Flarf. They published a zine of Flarf poems called Strong Off The Shelf in 2021. When they’re not writing or reciting poetry, Lemmy is normally obsessing over y2k low culture, eating popcorn and snuggling their overgrown cat, Moose.