LETTER WRITERS IN THE FAMILY
My mother had this pink stationery
with her name on the letterhead.
She wrote missives to friends and family
in her slow, ornate and delicate style.
That woman did not just detail
the most recent happenings in her life
and in those around her.
She put herself down on that paper.
It was there in the perfect curves
of her s’s, the meticulously dotted i’s,
and the t’s, so much like crucifixes,
you could almost see Jesus nailed to them.
What she slipped into an envelope
was as much a self-portrait as it
was sentences and paragraphs.
In days before email,
any letter I sent out into the world
was the nadir of handwriting,
a messy scrawl that resisted anybody
making sense of it.
But, from what I remember,
as with my mother, that scribble was me,
a mix of speed-writing, graffiti, bad grammar,
and the perfidy of left-handedness.
As with her way of thinking,
my mother worked meticulously
from beginning to end, neatly and
without sidetracks, getting her points
across, revealing her updates, in perfect order.
I, on the other hand (no pun intended) used
the word “Dear” as an excuse to skip right to
“yours affectionately”, then go backwards and
forwards at the same time, all in one mishmash
of words and phrases.
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My mother’s letters were easily understood.
So was my mother.
Mine presented insurmountable difficulties.
I accept the criticism.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.