Dragging around some miserable wife
on a real hike, straight up a cliff
of corn, holding onto silk husks
for dear life—it’s a little odd
to vacation as your mistress, and as
the only one licensed to drive, but
no one seems to mind. A little
disturbed but making it through
Swelling up before noon, I dreamt
my abalone ring came apart
Live fish and shell peeled off
my finger, in a retail store
of which you were the owner.
This day smells like toast.
Maggie Nelson, “September 2”
“My love for the alphabet, which endures, grew out of reciting it but, before that, out of seeing the letters on the page. In my own story books, before I could read them for myself, I fell in love with various winding, enchanted-looking initials drawn by Walter Crane at the heads of fairy tales. In ‘Once upon a time’ an ‘O’ had a rabbit running it as a treadmill, his feet upon flowers. When the day came, years later, for me to see the Book of Kells, all the wizardry of letter, initial, and word swept over me a thousand times over, and the illumination, the gold, seemed a part of the word’s beauty and holiness that had been there from the start.”
Eudora Welty | One Writer’s Beginnings
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