Stigmatology

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by Shira Dentz

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   Though measure & math
    can’t be avoided—
 
       starts, ends,
 
         repetitions
          doing their job
           before breaking—
 
            bands are solicitous,
                  edgy, swank

          fastener or slinger,
               taw

                extended they can slap
              back with what you
            hoped to jettison:

        thus, a wilted projection.

      To fix a point is
     to make enclosure—
    steady enough
   to both open and close;
  locate thread, eye, & needle
 
   rotating, bounded, yielding, in wait .

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Shira Dentz is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books); winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021), and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Idaho Review, Diagram, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Apartment, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Poetrysociety.org, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards. More about her writing can be found at shiradentz.com

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