Still: The Journal

Pauletta Hansel

Palindrome

If time, too, is a place
          we journey slowly through as
                    for a closer look, might not
                              (we ask) these tracks we travel
                                        take us back again,
                                                  the way my mother remembers,
                                                            now, the future, lives in the past?

                                                            Now the future lives in the past
                                                  the way my mother remembers.
                                        Take us back again.
                              We ask these tracks we travel
                    for a closer look. Might not
          we journey slowly through as
if time, too, is a place?

~

Pauletta Hansel’s poems and prose have been featured in journals including Kudzu, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Still: The Journal, and on The Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. She is author of five poetry collections; a sixth, Palindrome, is forthcoming from Dos Madres Press. Pauletta is co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Named Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate, Pauletta leads writing workshops and retreats in the Greater Cincinnati area and beyond. 

~

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