On not forgetting
Sister Blue Teeth, Petrarch's wife, Ghosts in the machine
~ Light Poem by Robert Montgomery
“Loving someone is, in part, being their scribe, keeping account of who they were, holding on to their objects as a tribute. The nameless woman with the blue teeth did her work, I’d like to think, from some sense of love. Either love of the divine or of the women she worked with or, perhaps, of her art alone. Licking one’s brush to get the perfect tip feels like a sign of someone who cared about her craft.”
~ Dorothy Fortenberry, “What Do You Keep?” (Commonweal)
“Old archives are so bad
when it comes to women, sometimes you’re just glad
there’s a tale to tell, however apocryphal.”
~ Mary Jo Salter, “An Alley in Avignon” (Commonweal)