Jacqueline Winter Thomas

Derrida’s Attic

We are living in Derrida’s attic.

Our wooden vase does not hold water
and our clocks cannot tell time.

We head to the river for birds, the city for fish.

Outside our window: geese molting
yesterday, again today, molted tomorrow.

We forget the present tense for flight and
sleep with our feet on the pillow.

Where we are, we cease to be—
so look for missing bodies.

We lift the pitcher. When the milk
spills, we drink the floor.

Somewhere between the wood and your hands,
an open ledger, its lines unharvested.

The ghosts that live in the cellar do not speak.
Still, we call to them, try our fragile tongues.

Jacqueline Winter Thomas is a contributing editor at Eratio and an MA candidate at Dartmouth College. She teaches courses in writing and form. Her poems and papers have appeared in Green Mountains Review, TAB, Redivider, Diagram, Barrelhouse, Tinderbox, and Open House among others. She is interested in the convergence of poetics and philosophy, and has attended the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. She has an MFA in poetry from The University of North Carolina Wilmington.