From “Wound Up”

A hand writing. That’s always interesting. That’s the pleasure of writing. Like hang gliding—you lift, go loop de loop, feels like you transcend your body and gravity, and you land on an air strip.

Handwriting puts me under the spell of verticality and tilt, which suggests sound and music.

I started with scrolls in the nineties—I took them on the road with me. Scrolls were portable, they are visual and sculptural. You can lay them out and define space with them. I like things that unroll. The gesture of unrolling is itself like speaking.
This work is part of the portfolio “julie ezelle patton: J Walking Through the Alphabet” in the March 2026 issue of Poetry and is excerpted from J Walking Through the Alphabet by julie ezelle patton and edited by Abou Farman and Janice A. Lowe (Nightboat Books, 2026).


