Letterlocking

Letterlocking is an ode to postcards, grocery lists, ideas on cocktail napkins, notes passed under doors, envelopes, and secrets. It is a record of the way the written word leaves its mark on us and the ways we hold on to one another during separations of all kinds. From gentle repetitions that read like pleadings—a do-over by the undone—to soft spaces of courting rituals that stay between lovers, inner turmoils easier to write than to say aloud, and imagined closure for friends and enemies on the receiving end, the epistolic poems in Stephanie Staab’s Letterlocking reveal our deepest intimacies and pay homage to the security of an unbroken seal.

Stephanie Staab is an American poet living in the Black Forest, Germany. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Lake Effect, Lunch Ticket, Chestnut Review, and Ligeia Magazine, among other outlets.