Letter for Elena Ferrante: Between Stations

One condition of emergence is flight like the inside of an inside joke it’s a public private thing

like property or a golf widow gazing into her glass of gin where does the time go

where the cardinal rule of just don’t be a dick is in effect and the static in our song

is not cosmic code for longing if weaponizing words has failed to make us modern

we must sing on our own behalf or take lovers who sing to us read to us

poems about infinite love of women with definite borders whose lines run deep

enough to house the blood to bridge the distance that creates the loss

As ever,

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Cover of TLR's "Big Blue Whale" issueTina Cane is a poet, teacher, and the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools in Rhode Island. She is the author of The Fifth Thought, and her poems have appeared in Spinning Jenny, Tupelo Quarterly, and Two Serious Ladies, among others.

“Letter for Elena Ferrante: Between Stations” originally appeared in Big Blue Whale (TLR, Summer 2016)

 

Read more of Tina Cane’s work here.