Jessica Dionne
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Jessica Dionne is a PhD student at GSU and the production editor of New South. She received her MFA from NC State and an MA from UNCC. Her chapbook Second-Hand Love Stories is forthcoming from Fjords Press. She was a finalist in Passages North's 2021 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, Arts and Letters' 2020 Poetry Prize, and Narrative's 2019 30 Below contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, The Moth Magazine (IE), The Fourth River, Meridian, Narrative, Rust + Moth, Mascara Literary Review (AU), and others.
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The Art of Bricolage
I sort piles to the left and the right of me. I sort out
the things that are useful from the things that are necessary,
what we cannot do without. I sift through the soil,
shake out the raw and the scored and set aside what I can use.
Here is the assemblage I have wanted. Here
is the craft I have earned from the earth.
Dried seeds make a necklace that can cleave
to the collar. I am asking for something shaped true.
I tinker. The breastplate: tiled and teeming.
The armor is only for words. It’s for the birds.
Rusted fan blades become wings: the only way
to impersonate the sparrow is to be lustful and endless.
I take red rock and grind it to dust for rouge. I take
my time, I time my taking. Something’s ticking.
The carapaces of the jewel beetle, the red weevil
make a stained-glass window I can glance through, in time.
How many histories can sit in a grain of silt on the head
of the penny I now use for a button? A dozen? A glutton
for stories will dig through, dust off, and reassemble.
It’s simple: take this and that. Take a pinch of this
and a smack of that. Amass it.
the things that are useful from the things that are necessary,
what we cannot do without. I sift through the soil,
shake out the raw and the scored and set aside what I can use.
Here is the assemblage I have wanted. Here
is the craft I have earned from the earth.
Dried seeds make a necklace that can cleave
to the collar. I am asking for something shaped true.
I tinker. The breastplate: tiled and teeming.
The armor is only for words. It’s for the birds.
Rusted fan blades become wings: the only way
to impersonate the sparrow is to be lustful and endless.
I take red rock and grind it to dust for rouge. I take
my time, I time my taking. Something’s ticking.
The carapaces of the jewel beetle, the red weevil
make a stained-glass window I can glance through, in time.
How many histories can sit in a grain of silt on the head
of the penny I now use for a button? A dozen? A glutton
for stories will dig through, dust off, and reassemble.
It’s simple: take this and that. Take a pinch of this
and a smack of that. Amass it.
Commentary
Jessica on “The Art of Bricolage”:
“The Art of Bricolage” is part of a larger project which is in conversation with geographer Doreen Massey and her article “The Elusiveness of Place.” In the article, Massey talks about her notion of layered histories—the many different histories that are stacked upon one another—and how any given place is a culmination of “stories-so-far.” I was fascinated by this idea and wanted to explore it through the lens of a place I know well in North Carolina. While most of the poems in the project confront the specifics of this place, I wanted to write a few poems that addressed the work that goes into a project of this nature. “The Art of Bricolage” is a kind of Ars Poetica to the collection—thinking about the digging that is required to fully examine the layered histories of place.
When writing the poem I wanted to focus on the discovery and subsequent use of various objects gleaned from the earth. The idea of bricolage describes an assessment of each of the discoveries, and their potential usefulness to the speaker. The natural and the man-made, junk and treasure—all have a purpose in the eye of the speaker.
The workshop process was incredibly helpful to me in polishing this poem. Originally, the final two lines came at the beginning, which I saw as a kind of invocation to the process of both the work and the poem. A friend in my cohort suggested that moving the lines to the end of the poem, after allowing the reader to see the process unfold, allows the lines to act as an invitation to the reader to try the art of bricolage out for themselves. I think it was a fantastic call.
General Editor Shon Mapp on “The Art of Bricolage”:
When I first read "The Art of Bricolage," I was immediately drawn to the precise language that echoed its theme. It ventures beyond mere existentialism and honors the complexity of our decisions. We are seekers of "something shaped true" and selectors from the sum of our experiences. With each successive read, I uncovered the nuance of what it means to carry on with the spirit of fortitude. In its final lines I found a new mantra, "It's simple: take this and that. Take a pinch of this and a smack of that. Amass it."
“The Art of Bricolage” is part of a larger project which is in conversation with geographer Doreen Massey and her article “The Elusiveness of Place.” In the article, Massey talks about her notion of layered histories—the many different histories that are stacked upon one another—and how any given place is a culmination of “stories-so-far.” I was fascinated by this idea and wanted to explore it through the lens of a place I know well in North Carolina. While most of the poems in the project confront the specifics of this place, I wanted to write a few poems that addressed the work that goes into a project of this nature. “The Art of Bricolage” is a kind of Ars Poetica to the collection—thinking about the digging that is required to fully examine the layered histories of place.
When writing the poem I wanted to focus on the discovery and subsequent use of various objects gleaned from the earth. The idea of bricolage describes an assessment of each of the discoveries, and their potential usefulness to the speaker. The natural and the man-made, junk and treasure—all have a purpose in the eye of the speaker.
The workshop process was incredibly helpful to me in polishing this poem. Originally, the final two lines came at the beginning, which I saw as a kind of invocation to the process of both the work and the poem. A friend in my cohort suggested that moving the lines to the end of the poem, after allowing the reader to see the process unfold, allows the lines to act as an invitation to the reader to try the art of bricolage out for themselves. I think it was a fantastic call.
General Editor Shon Mapp on “The Art of Bricolage”:
When I first read "The Art of Bricolage," I was immediately drawn to the precise language that echoed its theme. It ventures beyond mere existentialism and honors the complexity of our decisions. We are seekers of "something shaped true" and selectors from the sum of our experiences. With each successive read, I uncovered the nuance of what it means to carry on with the spirit of fortitude. In its final lines I found a new mantra, "It's simple: take this and that. Take a pinch of this and a smack of that. Amass it."
