"Dear Simone (Fattal),"
The calendar of your hair: event sculptures
A twist in the remainder of heart: thumb beating
The thought of taletelling: a tall shape
The quickened journey: fraught with guessing about you
She to a rhyme wrestling there: quick flowers
And the form: into a hundred sculptures
There was more: some frothing too
Along the cape of it: a jam of preservation
So too in Bethlehem: why not difference
The acrobatics of holding up: angular mechanics
Anger and enlightenment: the head turning on itself
Just one god: of all the possibilities
A match or murder: war slipping sidelong
It was you and it was you and it was no you: events along a reigning chaos
December 13, 2017
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Author Bio: Sarah Riggs is a writer and artist, born in New York where she is now based, after having spent over a decade in Paris. She is the author of seven books of poetry in English: Waterwork (Chax, 2007), Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Reality Street, 2007), 60 Textos (Ugly Duckling, 2010), Autobiography of Envelopes (Burning Deck, 2012), Pomme & Granite (1913 Press, 2015) which won a 1913 poetry prize, Eavesdrop (Chax, 2019) and The Nerve Epistle(forthcoming Roof Books, spring 2020/21). She is the author of the book of essays Word Sightings: Poetry and Visual Media in Stevens, Bishop, & O’Hara (Routledge, 2002), and has translated and co-translated six books of contemporary French poetry into English, including most recently Etel Adnan’s Time (Nightboat, 2019).