The song I hummed
to send you to rest,
though the way your head
sank deep into the pillow
told me you were far away already,
is a tune I have forgotten.
But I recall that night of moonlight,
its glow making you look like a child
as I brushed your hair from your brow
to press a wet washcloth there.
Suddenly you opened your eyes
and reached your arm to me:
Love me, you said,
and by the way you looked beyond me
I knew the fever was talking.
But I didn’t question you
though even your words
I love you—I love you
echoed beyond me.
It didn’t matter—
to hear them was enough.
isbn 1-59661-075-1
59 pages/$9
Julia Nunnally Duncan’s gifts as a fiction writer energize these poems with the narrative flow and coherence that make them live in our imaginations as only stories can. Reading them transforms our sense of place and person. We find in these poems a reality that defies indifference and cultural amnesia.
—Kathryn Stripling Byer
In An Endless Tapestry, Julia Nunnally Duncan renders the past with a specificity that is both immediate and timeless. These poems of longing and memory are beautifully written and perfectly recalled. The world she creates has a sweep of understanding of the human grain and she deftly records both the vulnerabilities and the strengths of the figures who populate this collection. There are many unforgettable portraits here, such as that of the “pale-eyed mountain boy,/too old for school,/too simple for society.” Such moments show a fine poet at the height of her powers.
—John Skoyles
Julis Nunnally Duncan writes knowingly of what leads to love and to its loss, how that loss is to be borne and how the love remembered. Her rich and glowing tapestry of memory is woven of daily details connected in patterns we may well recognize. A mother gathers dirt for her garden and disregards the fact that her hands are work-worn and not beautiful. A pair of old shoes found in housecleaning suddenly recall a sister’s early death. “March flowers,” those old fashioned early double jonquils, mark a deserted home place as nothing else quite can. And a cup of Eight O’Clock® coffee signals a passage into adulthood. We have been there. Duncan takes us back again. It is, thankfully, without end.
—Isabel Zuber
Julia Nunnally Duncan is a western North Carolinian whose writing explores the lives of working class people in a textile town. Duncan studied creative writing at Warren Wilson College and is the author of three books of fiction. She lives in Marion, North Carolina, with her husband, Steve, and her daughter, Annie.