The Tapestry

By Forrest Gander b. 1956 Forrest Gander

—for Pilar Coover

Me, when I think of you I see

Alley cats in your kitchen,

God weeping at your openings,

Individual acts of imagination, never

Culligan men under

Floorboards slipping hallucinogens into your water.

Let me say I have imagined you

Undressing guests before mirrors

To let their dragonfly bodies

Escape from human shells.

Forrest Gander, “The Tapestry” from Lynchburg. Copyright © 1993 by Forrest Gander. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, upress.pitt.edu.

Source: Lynchburg (1993)

Biography

Born in California’s Mojave Desert, poet Forrest Gander grew up in Virginia and attended the College of William & Mary, where he majored in geology. After receiving an MA in literature from San Francisco State University, Gander moved to Mexico, then to Arkansas, where his poetry—informed by his knowledge of geology—turned its attention to landscape as foreground or source of action.

Gander’s books of poetry include Eye Against . . .

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