writer's statement
Emi Wood Scully’s poetry is a reflection of transitory memories, or moments of being, that emerge as quickly as they depart. Her writing often synthesizes important or impactful people in her life, with her surrounding landscape. She has often been told that her poetry is colorful, vivid, and “reads like a painting.” Scully prefers to omit punctuation since this parallels the way memory is typically revealed. Similar to when the speaker in Swann’s Way takes a bite of his madeleine dipped in tea, and is transported back to an involuntary memory from his past, she also tends to write under the same spell of resurrected reverie. In much of her work, she too is in search of lost time. Scully tries to begin writing with a planned trajectory but, similar to stream of consciousness narration, she often models her stanzas as free flowing, fleeting impressions.
Poems
It’s Always Only Been You
late October
Nighttime
too close to Halloween
feeling eerie
Feels
like a space that
used to be my mine
No place for a Best in Show
ribbon
you placed
on my bulletin board
Incentive to
“get the hell out of here”
Insensitive
onlookers
when
Only your voice
on the phone
Only
Clanking heels on shiny
Vinyl
Passing my door
At the mercy of
time
standing still
Waiting
for results
Only the sound
of privacy curtains
Only
Dragging across its track
Exposure
Concealment
set apart
from you
and those
not
anchored
to laboratory
findings
Now
I wait
and you
only
waver between saline
and
the incessant sound
of beeping
monitors
abandoned
Published in The New River, 2024
Deadheading
Approximately 799 miles away from home
you turn up.
Crowding the deck;
Peering between slats
with your tribe: Heliantheae.
Family name: Asteraceae.
Ray and disk florets
benefit from pruning
to encourage further blooms.
Variegated blossoms.
Petals like a tie-dye t-shirt
purchased at Merle’s
with unearned money.
Blooms: the embodiment of teenage drives
through quiet country roads.
Blaring mixed tapes of the Dead
down lonely Guilford streets
In the summer.
Every so many miles
a Cape or Saltbox;
Offering mason jars
filled with small bouquets of you.
Tied loosely with thin burlap.
Cost: free.
A backdrop of faded buntings
draped outside of front windows,
leftover from the holiday.
Thank you: Johann Gottfried Zinn
for these thoughts of freedom
and burgeoning encouragement.
A silent remembrance:
the recklessness of youth
and eventual maturity
from the periphery inward.
Sitting out back
on this hot July evening
I feel akin to your beauty.
I, too, am somewhere in-between
Containing numerous rows
and a visible center.
Distracted by covert dahlias;
Perplexed by pushy cosmos
Poppies: stalled.
Published in Same Faces Collective, 2023
View of My Neighbor’s Back Door
Brittle
Copper leaves
Inconsistently lie to rest
on verdant grasses
still with
summer’s echo.
November’s manifesto
proclaims its inditement,
once again the barrenness.
Nature’s short-lived prismatic display
Ever-turning between houses.
Your back door light reveals itself
a little more with each receded leaf
becoming apparent.
Validation of the new season.
A ruthless commencement.
Its prerequisite for illuminating
the darkest cycle
with artificial light
in the event that
Someone bravely turns up
Knocking
to be let in from the cold.
Published in The Harbour Journal, 2023
Gestures of Love in Five Phases
You used to rest your elbows on the rusted windowsill
Actually you leaned on the window pane
your nose nearly pressed up against the screen
No matter how stagnant and humid the weather
an indication of the last few days of middle school
Or the bone chilling winds from a ruthless winter
which made your eyes water
It didn’t matter. You still waited.
And every time I looked back you were still watching me.
Waiting for my foot to hit the last bus step
so that I could turn to you once more while we held up our sign.
“I love you.” The only ASL you knew.
With “The Blue Danube” lingering in my memory
I watched you holding up your hand until you were out of my sight.
This continued until high school
until I started driving myself
in my 1987 red Subaru.
Times I was too proud to say those words to mommy.
But I did Now, I hope you knew.
And then I was gone
off to college where the only mutual sign of love
was a scribbled message in my fish shaped, spiral notebook
that sat beside the phone. A message from my roommate:
“your mom called.“ Not once
but this repeated phrase took up several pages.
Then I loved you too.
Once our paths crossed again
and I needed you more than ever
You waited for me still in the pouring rain
holding an umbrella Smoking a cigarette Waiting
biding my face in eager anticipation.
Pushing me back to my tiny apartment where I never wanted you to leave.
Today
I staunchly wait for the typing awareness indicator
Underneath our messages Words like an ancient tongue
only we understand.
No matter what I am doing Or where I am
I wait for those three dots to show up on my phone
so that I may never have to experience the unstinting regret
of a missed opportunity to say I love you.
Published in Phoenix Literary & Arts Magazine, 2022
June Flowers on Main Street
The once whitewashed fence
covertly corroded
barely corals the creeping roses
and abundant gardenia
Silently
tall grasses lie flattened
Suppressed by heavy rain
Surreptitiously covering the barn
that withholds Dickinson’s sawmill
Handwritten notes etched in Polish
Hidden behind the
meeting of wall and pine floorboard
Its structure
shrouded by recovering catmint,
Foxgloves whispering mam sekret
to Rose of Sharon
Black-eyed Susan beckoning to
blushing begonia
Red rhododendron
repentant of recouping
its own secrets
blowing the cover of
Resurgent hydrangeas
Published in Backchannels Journal, 2022
Lines Composed Many Miles From Tucson
Just beyond the quarry wall
Resembling Stonehenge
a molten lava sky is effortlessly
showcased
before you
Like burning embers
the remains of a lofty fire
A seance for the end of a decade
You tell me
that you never understood God’s artistry
until you witnessed your first Catalina sky
Combustible claret infused mountains
Seeping sanguine
smoldering strokes
This awe inspiring backdrop
Another nightly masterpiece
Or an example of
the Romantic’s notion of sublimity
Here, across the street from the Connecticut River
I sit at my white bistro patio set
Subtly rusting
and imagine you, so small and insignificant
stained with sun’s dusky afterglow
Quietly sitting at yours
Published in Connecticut Literary Anthology, 2020
writer's statement
Emi Wood Scully’s poetry is a reflection of transitory memories, or moments of being, that emerge as quickly as they depart. Her writing often synthesizes important or impactful people in her life, with her surrounding landscape. She has often been told that her poetry is colorful, vivid, and “reads like a painting.” Scully prefers to omit punctuation since this parallels the way memory is typically revealed. Similar to when the speaker in Swann’s Way takes a bite of his madeleine dipped in tea, and is transported back to an involuntary memory from his past, she also tends to write under the same spell of resurrected reverie. In much of her work, she too is in search of lost time. Scully tries to begin writing with a planned trajectory but, similar to stream of consciousness narration, she often models her stanzas as free flowing, fleeting impressions.
Poems
View of My Neighbor’s Back Door
late October
Nighttime
too close to Halloween
feeling eerie
Feels
like a space that
used to be my mine
No place for a Best in Show
ribbon
you placed
on my bulletin board
Incentive to
“get the hell out of here”
Insensitive
onlookers
when
Only your voice
on the phone
Only
Clanking heels on shiny
Vinyl
Passing my door
At the mercy of
time
standing still
Waiting
for results
Only the sound
of privacy curtains
Only
Dragging across its track
Exposure
Concealment
set apart
from you
and those
not
anchored
to laboratory
findings
Now
I wait
and you
only
waver between saline
and
the incessant sound
of beeping
monitors
abandoned
Published in The New River, 2024
Deadheading
Approximately 799 miles away from home
you turn up.
Crowding the deck;
Peering between slats
with your tribe: Heliantheae.
Family name: Asteraceae.
Ray and disk florets
benefit from pruning
to encourage further blooms.
Variegated blossoms.
Petals like a tie-dye t-shirt
purchased at Merle’s
with unearned money.
Blooms: the embodiment of teenage drives
through quiet country roads.
Blaring mixed tapes of the Dead
down lonely Guilford streets
In the summer.
Every so many miles
a Cape or Saltbox;
Offering mason jars
filled with small bouquets of you.
Tied loosely with thin burlap.
Cost: free.
A backdrop of faded buntings
draped outside of front windows,
leftover from the holiday.
Thank you: Johann Gottfried Zinn
for these thoughts of freedom
and burgeoning encouragement.
A silent remembrance:
the recklessness of youth
and eventual maturity
from the periphery inward.
Sitting out back
on this hot July evening
I feel akin to your beauty.
I, too, am somewhere in-between
Containing numerous rows
and a visible center.
Distracted by covert dahlias;
Perplexed by pushy cosmos
Poppies: stalled.
Published in Same Faces Collective, 2023
View of My Neighbor’s Back Door
Brittle
Copper leaves
Inconsistently lie to rest
on verdant grasses
still with
summer’s echo.
November’s manifesto
proclaims its inditement,
once again the barrenness.
Nature’s short-lived prismatic display
Ever-turning between houses.
Your back door light reveals itself
a little more with each receded leaf
becoming apparent.
Validation of the new season.
A ruthless commencement.
Its prerequisite for illuminating
the darkest cycle
with artificial light
in the event that
Someone bravely turns up
Knocking
to be let in from the cold.
Published in The Harbour Journal, 2023
June Flowers on Main Street
The once whitewashed fence
covertly corroded
barely corals the creeping roses
and abundant gardenia
Silently
tall grasses lie flattened
Suppressed by heavy rain
Surreptitiously covering the barn
that withholds Dickinson’s sawmill
Handwritten notes etched in Polish
Hidden behind the
meeting of wall and pine floorboard
Its structure
shrouded by recovering catmint,
Foxgloves whispering mam sekret
to Rose of Sharon
Black-eyed Susan beckoning to
blushing begonia
Red rhododendron
repentant of recouping
its own secrets
blowing the cover of
Resurgent hydrangeas
Published in Backchannels Journal, 2022
Lines Composed Many Miles From Tucson
Just beyond the quarry wall
Resembling Stonehenge
a molten lava sky is effortlessly
showcased
before you
Like burning embers
the remains of a lofty fire
A seance for the end of a decade
You tell me
that you never understood God’s artistry
until you witnessed your first Catalina sky
Combustible claret infused mountains
Seeping sanguine
smoldering strokes
This awe inspiring backdrop
Another nightly masterpiece
Or an example of
the Romantic’s notion of sublimity
Here, across the street from the Connecticut River
I sit at my white bistro patio set
Subtly rusting
and imagine you, so small and insignificant
stained with sun’s dusky afterglow
Quietly sitting at yours
Published in Connecticut Literary Anthology, 2020