Dottery

The Dottery is a tale of dotters before they are born. In this series of prose poems you meet their would-be-mutters, the buoys they will know, their inner warden, and the mutterers who cannot have them. The Dottery itself is a sort-of pre-purgatory, a finishing school for the fetal feminine. The five sections correspond to the conceptual set-ups interrogated within. In "e;wound,"e; The Dottery is described, as are its inhabitants and their difficulties. In "e;Dual,"e; a gender binary is introduced and (hopefully) eviscerated.  "e;Triage"e; establishes the issues that plague both the dotters and those who would bring them out into the world-specifically into the idea of America (I'm Erica and I can prefer a hummer to the rose parade"e;). In "e;Fear,"e; failed dotters (out in the world) are described in obit fashion. Finally, in "e;Thief"e; one mutterer recounts how she stole her dotter ("e;a snatched piece"e;) to become a mutter and chronicles both her desires and regrets.