In No One’s Land

Kristi Maxwell

A sample poem from the book

from Correspondence Game

20 December 1828

M—

Snow fattens the roads—or else it’s scar tissue
warmth exfoliates¹⁹

I hope invention is the catgut with which you’re sutured and home ²⁰
the ointment.

At last evening’s show, an exploitationist asked
for his opaque fabric patched
against the Turk’s chest

to assert his claim
an operator observed the board
from there—

we mocked him, lightly, and asserted too the viability
the heart uses skin as a magnifying glass—
that something burns through—is burned through.

These are little victories.

As for your “bronze-bent bird,” would the egg
hatch-persist?

I confess, I hoped it inedible—
that the imaginary parents the real.

Patiently, as my knight takes your king’s pawn²¹—
________

¹⁹Because either option would be considered positive coming from S., as he needed to gain at least five pounds after a month-long sickness that preceded the season change, and, for scar tissue to be exfoliated, it suggests a disappearance, most likely due to healing, it is accepted that this is how S. answered M.’s plea to reconsider—an affirmative answer.

²⁰A literal interpretation: Europe. An Abstract interpretation: M’s own person. A generic interpretation: the place in which one’s growth occurred. A literal interpretation of growth: noted by age- and inch-count. A non-literal interpretation: noted by the head from which one’s life philosophy springs.

²¹This is the last move recorded in addition to its accompanying correspondence, though, because the game’s complete notation (see index) was found in M.’s documents, we know the game was completed in 1833, three years before their deaths.