Jessica Goodfellow
Dementia Cento
Memories—like trick candles
shining and melting, shining and flying,
floating up the white sky
of fine white cloud—kept disappearing, reappearing.
And beneath them an abyssal white
as a white animal waiting, and fabric ripped
from decades of unribboning,
of tying ribbons around grief.
How to stitch the white,
to hoard its measure of nothing,
keeping confusion in check, that constant cycle―
to hold this for you. I am holding this for you.
Memories—like trick candles
shining and melting, shining and flying,
floating up the white sky
of fine white cloud—kept disappearing, reappearing.
And beneath them an abyssal white
as a white animal waiting, and fabric ripped
from decades of unribboning,
of tying ribbons around grief.
How to stitch the white,
to hoard its measure of nothing,
keeping confusion in check, that constant cycle―
to hold this for you. I am holding this for you.
Sources: Richard Newman, Robin Davidson, Jean Valentine, Jeffrey Harrison, Yves Bonnefoy (trans. by Pascale Torracinta and Harry Thomas), Lightsey Darst, Alison Titus, Kevin Gonzalez, Rhoda Janzen, Bruce Bond, Judy Barisonzi, Richard Siken
Jessica Goodfellow’s books are Whiteout (University of Alaska Press, 2017), Mendeleev’s Mandala (2015) and The Insomniac’s Weather Report (2014). Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, Motionpoems, and The Writer’s Almanac. She was awarded the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal, and has been a writer-in-residence at Denali National Park and Preserve. Recently her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Threepenny Review, The Awl, The Southern Review, and Best American Poetry 2018. Jessica lives in Japan. Visit her website: www.jessicagoodfellow.com
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