Jeri Theriault

The Thing with Feathers

 
After my mother’s death   
I find the Collected Emily Dickinson
I didn’t know
she owned       bookmarked
with a word list      diacritical  
discursive   

her spidery script
on full polysyllabic display  
surprising
as a back-of-the-closet
mink. These words
her line-bold memoir  

hard break
from the red or black inked
accounts she worked       
like rosary beads.    
Her list   
diacritical    discursive   

curls at the edges        
like the rough bark
of bristly firs   
wood pulp  
my ancestors harvested
or bleached

and pressed   in wilderness
or mill     making lists
to remind themselves
            what to keep
            what to pass on.

Jeri Theriault’s poetry collections include Radost, my red (Moon Pie Press) and In the Museum of Surrender, first place winner of the 2013 Encircle Chapbook Contest. She is the editor of WAIT: Poems from the Pandemic (Littoral Books). Her poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as The Rumpus, The Texas Review, The New Ohio Review, and Plume. A Fulbright recipient and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she won the 2022 NORward Prize (New Ohio Review) and a 2019 Maine Literary Award for poetry. Jeri spent six years of her teaching career as English Department Chair at the International School of Prague, and now lives in South Portland, Maine.

Learn more about Jeri at www.jeritheriault.com