Excerpt from the book Last Call: Poems on Alcoholism, Addiction, and Deliverance

the other hand by Marjorie Maddox

What is
is antoher matter:

the other side of if
spiraling out of a black hold,
compressed into a question,
then an exclamation point
straight as western Ohio.
Dip it once, it comes out white
inside and out, twice and you can lick it

till there's nothing but a stick to pick your teeth with
or a pool cue that fingers the eight ball like a mystic,
never shoots straight.
You think that it is real and it is,
but what has that to with a world
strung together and sliced by longitude, latitude?
Everything upspins into a ribbon
you can wear in your bright black hair
until you tip your head and Atlantis tumbles out,
until chinaberry trees tease your ears
with a sound too light for wind.
It is your mother wiping her hands on an apron
stitched with the seven continents
of which you are one;

the back side of the sky in a Fragonard;
the tip of a shoe pointed up.
If you spy a traill of tea leaves,
half a golden apple,
a lobotomized scarecrow—you're close.
Turn the other way.
Quick.