Dedication

Abstract

Dedication Timothy Schaffert (bio) This one’s for Mr. XXX in tiny italicsWho knocked at my choppers until I shut up,the sentiment,typically tucked in between title and stanza,is the part of the poem I lick away first,from the line of your jaw— and just as quick I put back what I take.In my tongue’s path, tattoos reconfigure,taking on mouths and voicesto sing their own origin myths. Cursive up thigh,lyric lining the spine,I translate from the Frenchupon your skindirty poems long left un-Englished. La bite, the slang,a feminine article for the masculine member,I translate as serpent,sending it snaking alongthe vein of your cock,a vein likened to a lightning boltby a lover of yours I never knew. And with this noise,these crashing wrecks,I arouse the junk-eyed coyotesand the troops that pilgrim, [End Page 124] death-marching up from miles awayto dance in old stormsand pray to old violenceand worship old punishment,all the old stories,once true,now only fablesin faded ink,parables revised by their parchment. [End Page 125] Timothy Schaffert TIMOTHY SCHAFFERT is the author of six novels, most recently The Perfume Thief, which was a Los Angeles Times Top Ten Best Books of the Summer in 2021 and a One World, One Book selection by Penguin Random House International. His seventh novel, a story with ghosts in it, is forthcoming from Doubleday. His work on fairy tales has appeared in the magazine Enchanted Living and in the anthologies My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me; Brothers & Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales; and The Mermaid Handbook, among others. Even little snippets of reflection like this can sometimes feel too reliant on reality, and I struggle. Fairy tales, and the portal into imagination and invention the tradition allows, has for many years left me blissfully untethered. Copyright © 2023 Wayne State University Press