When I Told My Mother I Loved Her Handwriting

She told me the nuns made her practice
as if it were to be part of her religion.
Sister Mary-something, moving up

and down the aisle of desks aligned
against the corner of every third tile,
the slim gold crucifix pendulumed across

the pressed-black shift of her habit,
line up, line down, line up, as my mother’s
structured wrist scratched out succinct lines:

slight slant, leaning almost off-center,
not over, not under, just “to,”
thin lead-pressed coils wound tight and neat,

and how over and over and over,
her fingers cramped around the gold yellow
pencil body, eyeing the swiftness

of wood from a ruler that would crack
against the knuckles of all whose lines
began to fall past the thin blue margin.

Lorraine Henrie Lins is a Pennsylvania county Poet Laureate and author of four books of poetry: All the Stars Blown to One Side of The Sky, I Called It Swimming, Delaying Balance and most recently, 100 Tipton. She serves as the Director of New and Emerging Poets with Tekpoet and is a founding member of the “No River Twice” improvisational poetry troupe. Lins’ work appears in wide variety of familiar publications and collections, as well as on a small graffiti poster in New Zealand. Born and raised in the suburbs of Central New Jersey, the self-professed Jersey Girl now resides along the coast of North Carolina. www.LorraineHenrieLins.com