From “Wound Up”

A narrow roll of white, lined paper with text handwritten on it in black ink.

 

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.

 

A narrow piece of white, lined paper with black, handwritten script that reads either unfathomable loss theft hidden behind the smile or unfathomable hidden loss behind the smile theft.

 

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

 

A narrow and long piece of white paper with handwritten black script twists and winds around itself in a jumble.

 

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.

Notes:

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).

Source: Poetry (March 2026)