Jake Newland's "Abstractions of Sight" reads like a series of snapshots rather than a story. Black leaves, coffee-stained hair, sand over a lake, murals on a roadside, goats on cliffs, melting chocolate: each image arrives quickly and then gives way to the next. Many of them are slightly off or unsettled. Leaves "bleed," palms get "bulldozed," baskets are "riddled with holes." Things leak, melt, and change, and the poem seems to be watching a world that won't hold still, with the seasons shifting as hillsides go from brown to green.
The ending changes the tone. After all that drifting observation, the speaker speaks directly to someone: "Sit with me this afternoon." The request to stare into "icy irises" and "refill a glass" suggests closeness, though the cold eyes hint at some distance too. The mood is dreamy, a little wistful, and quietly hopeful, as if the speaker wants a steady moment of company in the middle of all the blur.