In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Letter for Emily Dickinson When I cut words you never may have said into fresh patterns, pierced in place with pins, ready to hold them down with my own thread, they change and twist sometimes, their color spins loose, and your spider generosity lends them from language that will never be free of you after all. My sampler reads, “called back.” It says, “she scribbled out these screeds.” It calls, “she left this trace, and now we start”— in stitched directions that follow the leads I take from you, as you take me apart. You wrote some of your lines while baking bread, propping a sheet of paper by the bins of salt and Bour, so if your kneading led to words, you’d tether them as if in thin black loops on paper. When they sang to be free, you captured those quick birds relentlessly and kept a slow, sure mercy in your deeds, leaving them room to peck and hunt their seeds in the white cages your vast iron art had made by moving books, and lives, and creeds. I take from you as you take me apart. 63 Originally published in Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003). ...

Share