The Dottery

<i>The Dottery</i> 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. <i>The Dottery</i> 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 &quot;wound,&quot; <i>The Dottery</i> is described, as are its inhabitants and their difficulties. In &quot;Dual,&quot; a gender binary is introduced and (hopefully) eviscerated. &quot;Triage&quot; 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&quot;) . In &quot;Fear,&quot; failed dotters (out in the world) are described in obit fashion. Finally, in &quot;Thief&quot; one mutterer recounts how she stole her dotter (&quot;a snatched piece&quot;) to become a mutter and chronicles both her desires and regrets.