Marginalia
I love to find a stranger’s marker limn
the margin of some argument—a girl,
I imagine, trapped in a grim
assignment, my sister, perhaps, arm
dangling over the bed edge trying to nail
the main point, beating the sluggish animal
of her attention, asleep again,
me opposite, her anagram,
more rearrangement than mirror, a gnarl
of complaint, hitched to some grail
far from her as now I limn
her words in the margin
of Kierkegaard: no justice to be found in
the physical world. Her words? Rag
of some teacher’s gloss? Inscrutable mail
from my dear one two months dead.
—Donna Masini
—found in 4:30 Movie (2018)