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    To Embroider the Ground with Prayer
    To Embroider the Ground with Prayer
    To Embroider the Ground with Prayer
    Ebook99 pages44 minutes

    To Embroider the Ground with Prayer

    By Teresa J. Scollon

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    About this ebook

    A beautiful meditation on grief, memory, and the seasons of life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayne State University Press
    Release dateFeb 15, 2012
    ISBN9780814336212
    To Embroider the Ground with Prayer
    Author

    Teresa J. Scollon

    Teresa J. Scollon is a native of Michigan’s thumb and an alumna and former writer-in-residence at Interlochen Arts Academy. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program and is author of the chapbook Friday Nights the Whole Town Goes to the Basketball Game. Scollon teaches writing at Northwestern Michigan College and has worked in several fields; she has served as EEO Officer for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and book review editor for ForeWord Reviews.

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      Book preview

      To Embroider the Ground with Prayer - Teresa J. Scollon

      © 2012 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.

      Manufactured in the United States of America.

      16 15 14 13 12             5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Scollon, Teresa J., 1962–

      To embroider the ground with prayer : poems / by Teresa J. Scollon.

      p. cm. — (Made in Michigan writers series)

      ISBN 978-0-8143-3620-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8143-3621-2 (ebook)

      I. Title.

      PS3619.C634T62 2012

      811’.6—dc22

      2011028209

      Designed and typeset by Maya Rhodes

      Composed in Berkeley and Cronos Pro

      To Embroider the Ground with Prayer

      Poems by Teresa J. Scollon

      Wayne State University Press

      Detroit

      To Embroider the Ground with Prayer

      MADE IN MICHIGAN WRITERS SERIES

      General Editors

      Michael Delp, Interlochen Center for the Arts

      M. L. Liebler, Wayne State University

      Advisory Editors

      Melba Joyce Boyd

      Wayne State University

      Stuart Dybek

      Western Michigan University

      Kathleen Glynn

      Jerry Herron

      Wayne State University

      Laura Kasischke

      University of Michigan

      Frank Rashid

      Marygrove College

      Doug Stanton

      Author of In Harm’s Way

      A complete listing of the books in this series

      can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu

      In memory of my father, who loved stories.

      Contents

      Cover

      Copyright

      Acknowledgments

      The Invitation

      Drought Year

      Mid-Life, I’m Lost

      Reciprocity

      Autobiography: Falling

      Family Music

      The Yoga Master at the Party

      Catechism

      July Fourth

      Friday Nights the Whole Town Goes to the Basketball Game

      John’s a Teacher

      Doc Tells a Story on Horse Piss Wilson

      Goodbye to Dwight Lipke

      Death and the Photocopier

      Exile

      Grief in the Morning

      Conference Room in Bloomington, Minnesota

      The Old Horse

      Pigeon Lady

      New Year’s Day, Winslow Beach, Maine

      A Meeting with the Game Wardens

      Summer Solstice in Black River Falls

      Little Boat

      How My Mother Loves Flowers

      Three A.M.: Prelude

      What Opens

      Untitled

      Poem to My Brothers and Sisters

      The View from Flight 616

      The Moon

      While I Stood in Obedient Line According to the Dictates of Another Round-Trip Ticket

      Commerce

      The-First-Bob-Ever Handles a Middle East Situation

      Halloween at Gross’s Meat Market

      A Visit

      The Last Cat

      At the Crematory

      The Widow Talks about Black Holes

      Everything’s In Motion

      Mitchell’s Story

      Dad Hides His Shakiness by Telling a Story

      Caesura

      Dubrovnik

      Nine

      Words, Poems

      Across the Tracks

      The Garden

      Acknowledgments

      I am grateful to my family and community for the relationships and experiences that have inspired and supported me. I should say that while real events and people were sources of inspiration, these poems are works of imagination and memory—that most flawed, individual, and treasured filter—and may not be read as factual works. Real people and events have been teased apart, conflated, recombined, and changed to serve the needs of the poems. Some things are entirely made up. I hope these poems will create a world of their own, in which the details may or may not be factual, but in which the sentiments are true, and deeply felt.

      I am grateful to Interlochen Arts Academy for its support of this manuscript through the Writer-in-Residence program.

      I also thank the National Endowment for the Arts for its support while this manuscript was completed.

      Thank you to the editors of the journals in which some of these poems first appeared. These journals include the Atlanta Review, Damselfly Press, Dunes Review, Nimrod, Off Channel: 2009 Anthology, Spoon River Poetry Review, Third Coast, and Wisconsin People and Ideas.

      Several poems appeared in the chapbook Friday Nights the Whole Town Goes to the Basketball Game, published in 2009 by the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press.

      I am deeply grateful to all who assisted in midwiving these poems. My family, friends, teachers, and

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