Jill Magi
six pages from Threads
To beat the odds of simultaneous death by bombing or arrest
they slept in different root cellars. But not feeling this, presently—
the position of the single body versus a whole family.
Feel a map as the phenomenon of a ghost limb: then there is no loss.
Tell me again the story of everything depends on this
I would be nothing
therefore houses inside out as bodies also:
“I once saw a smear of blood on the inside wall of a bombed out house”
stated as cool fact.
Dear Dad, we live in all topological dimensions at once—
Plaster falling away as skin from wood latticework
this city peels, its pages glued together by something personal
left inside the book.
Or neatly sutured.
Which roads lead out and which lead in?
The door was opened.
The Singing Revolution was bloodless.
Before love, grace, mercy. One must choose. Sõda or sõja
is war according to the rules.
Mr. Gorbachev: thank you for your glasnost.
From which they fled,
light in the town of Haapsalu.
I slip between reeds as seabirds call up the names
for queen anne’s lace, cattails, purple edge of horizon
"a space for thinking
and to walk. To inventory the weather and its colors where I do not speak
while every word uttered in isolation is accented on the first syllable
until across the gulf he draws fluent arrows west.