Process Note
This diagrammatic poem began as a thought exercise on how to capture the meandering, yet repetitive, act of noticing. It began as a list I jotted down after getting home from a walk in the snow with friends, and I was thinking about how appealing for someone to “look” at something with you is really an attempt to build a connection. Being the first observer is an inherently lonely position, but observing together is a position of communion. I think this poem is trying to capture the moment of transformation between those two states. I used Adobe Illustrator to create this work.
LookKelsey Zimmerman is a writer from Michigan currently living in Iowa. A 2021 Best of the Net nominee, her work has been published or is forthcoming in venues such as Longreads, miCRO, and Michigan Quarterly Review. You can find her on the web at www.kelseyzimmerman.com.