Nyctogram: The Lewis Carroll Poems by Jenna Butler

Nyctogram: The Lewis Carroll Poems 

Re: shaping 

you conspired to erase
your        self 

thus

if the world
asserts an alternate story 

fumble words
small       brilliant inanities 

keenly wear
that shattered logos  
with your whole heart 

(part anagram of “A Sea Dirge”) 

 

Photograph One: Alice as Peasant Girl 

dirty feet like trodden petals 
sidestep unease being so seen 
this face or that limpid mask 
subject aloof but still complicit 
nothing littoral about this art 

“A Sea Dirge,” “Jabberwocky,” and “Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur” 

Photograph Two: The Sisters 

gypsy triptych in linen and lace
she draws the eye with a robin’s flirt 
wild slip of a thing no
varnished victorian
              head-duck of a sister’s wing

“Jabberwocky,” “A Sea Dirge,” and “Poeta Fit Non Nascitur” 

Photograph Three: Thinking Out
she is never quite
present here        angles herself 
sidles along a
downcast glance
         faun/a            foreign

“Jabberwocky,” “A Sea Dirge,” and “Poeta Fit Non Nascitur” 

Jenna Butler is a poet, teacher, editor, and publisher from Edmonton, Canada. She is the author of three books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion, from NeWest Press and the University of Alberta Press. Butler teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton during the school year. During the summer, she and her husband live with three resident moose and a den of coyotes on a small organic farm in Alberta’s north country.