Loquacious: "One of my Favorite Words" by Rebecca Macijseki

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. In this installment, poet and writer Rebecca Macijeski tackles the question, "What is one of your favorite words?" I love the way Rebecca ― as a person and as a poet ― combines her playful sense of humor, her deep connection to language, and her highly intelligent brain. The result is utterly delightful.

One of my Favorite Words

By Rebecca Macijeski

There are many words that I love. Green. And sneakers. Thistles. And Meriwether. And shoehorns. And raspberries. And the white smoothing over the knuckles at my hands.

I will write poems all my life to celebrate the underappreciated quirkiness in words like rhododendron and semi-gloss and yo-yos and death certificates. So many poems linger in the comfortable heat of bougainvillea and sea shores and cinnamon. When I write words I am eating their sounds. My teeth get into their juice and their squishy pulp and before I know it I'm caught with the beautiful red stains on my palms. From picking strawberries. From bending over and picking each ripe, irregular round from the low-lying vines.

Can I pick one favorite? Can I choose one word to celebrate above all the other words? Does one have more electricity?

Lately I've been making lists of the words I use over and over again. You could say I'm obsessed with them. I'm not sure what it says about me that I'm always writing poems with brain in them, along with smiles and sandwiches, things that curve, tall grass, and mouths. Maybe I pick them because it's July ― I have been writing a lot of warm things. Maybe I write when I'm hungry. Could that explain the sandwiches and the mouths?

It is difficult to separate words from my feelings about them. I tend to dislike the idea that words are distinct, abstract units that have no relation to the real people and places and things they represent. I concede that there are a few clinical-sounding words that serve more like vitamins than the slow-roasted meals I want them to be. Not all words are red and juicy. Some feel and taste a little like chalk ― octogenarian, for example. An octogenarian is someone with eighty years of stories and experiences. Octogenarian speaks nothing at all to the reverence earned through the dozens of clam bakes, countless birthdays, weddings, and funerals, tears, shared moments, stubbed toes, meat loaves, UFO sightings, cups of tea, tourist photographs, sleepless nights, and friends that build a life.

So, I’ve been circuitous ― or, perhaps, I've been surreptitious. That's a good favorite. Surreptitious. I remember learning that word for the first time. "What a delightfully pompous way of saying 'sneaky,'" I thought to myself. The word starts with that slinking S,
 and then opens fully into a syrup sound. Then, as if embarrassed by how silly it's become, the word ends with an elite and academic itious.

"There," the word must think to itself after it all. "That should fool her."

You see. This is what happens when I consider my relationship with language: I end up with circles and lists. Interestingly, this reflects the shape of my most recent poems, my poems want to hold everything inside them. They want to categorize and complete. Maybe that's what dictates the repeating. If a poem is a snapshot of the unconscious, or a representation of thought, or a transcript of my dialogue with my own mind ― all variations on the same idea ― then it makes sense that I'd be pursuing the same words. I'm trying, over and over again, to write the same poem, the poem that says everything there is to say about thistles and smiles and curving strawberry vines.

Of course this is impossible, but I know I will always try. With each attempt I learn too much to ever want to stop trying.

Such a silly brain. Tricking me into seeing the newness of each recycled thought. Such a silly, wonderful, surreptitious brain.

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Rebecca Macijeski earned an MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in July 2011. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Salon, Lullwater Review, and Clackamas Literary Review. She currently serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Hunger Mountain.