Threads
by Jill Magi
Futurepoem, 2007
144 pages / $15  Buy from SPD or Amazon

I

Ghosts.
The ghost of the homeland (“isamaa” – fatherland).
The ghost of family history.
The shadow of the self.

Phantom limb:
“the sensation that an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like the appendix) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. Approximately 60-80% of individuals with an amputation experience phantom sensations in their amputated limb, and the majority of the sensations are painful. […] The missing limb often feels shorter and may feel as if it is in a distorted and painful position.” ¹

Fig. 1: Illustration of ‘paralyzed’ phantom limb sensations, Phantom Pain by Rebecca Brightwell via AgrAbility in Georgia (http://agrabilityinga.com/phantompain.html)

“most treatments for phantom limb pain […] are ineffective and fail to consider the mechanisms that underline production of the pain.” – Herta Flor, Dept. of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg.²

The phantom manuscript.
This is the tale of Magi’s father, told in prose images torn & stitched.  Letters, maps: they hint at this other text, this fuller text which serves as the source for the book, but which we never fully see. The father text. The sensation of the story.

II

Father text/fossil text.
The tearing & restitching of the father’s map reconstructed by the daughter as an attempt toward understanding (image on pg 10 etc). Revisions are made; bloodline edits (edits made as we evolve…edits between generation & generation), Magi the writer as both the experiencer & the engineer of her history:

“Engineer precedes father precedes master precedes oneself, even independence[…]” (pg 16).

But also: an overlap of multiple identity. Layering of who you are under who you came from.
The father on the daughter. His image superimposed over her own. This is the true meaning of Americanism: the overlap of heritage (ethnic/local) with “american” identity.

“The meaning of natural.” (pg. 96)
The meaning of being natural. How does the process of editing ones history make history? How does memory spontaneously create itself?

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