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