Cursive

Roselle Avenue School. Above the blackboard hangs a row of Kelly-green cards with white letters in script: this is Mrs. Rote’s third-grade class, and we are old enough to learn penmanship. Plus, Barbara and I were Brownies.

Oh, his neon-orange envelopes in 1968! Oh, his loopy handwriting! Oh— kissing in the alcove back of the dōjō—

After Skyping her, I take out the Lima-at-night postcard she sent and realize I do not know this adult daughter’s handwriting. Facets, mysterious as geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert whose lines converge on the horizon at the winter solstice. Zoomorphic.

Albert Fish couldn’t help himself and sent a taunting anonymous letter to the mother of one of his victims that included details of killing then devouring her. I thought he was nabbed after his handwriting was identified but the evidence was based on the stationary.

Nibs

Florid or block

(Zoomorphic. Phytomorphic.)

Doctor’s prescription

My own jumbled style: mostly what I learned in third grade but with Mother’s capital M and H. And, although graphology is no longer considered a science, my writing barely slants which means I “tend to be logical and practical; also guarded with my emotions.” And my s is pointy, indicating that I am “intellectually probing and like to study new things.” (The higher the peaks, the more ambitious one is.)

An antique Coney Island postcard with elegantly written, Irma dear, wish you were with me to see the Tattooed Lady. Couldn’t tell where the inked pussycats ended, and her costume began! Love, Bertie

Mother’s curlicue shorthand on a scrap of yellow legal paper found eighteen years after her death. After she was killed.

Voter ID

“Handwriting on the wall,” meaning a dire warning, comes from Daniel 5:5, where Daniel interprets “some mysterious writing that a disembodied hand has inscribed on the palace wall, telling King Belshazzar that he will be overthrown.” (Ammer’s online Dictionary of Cliches) Cool.

“Kilroy was here,” “Free Huey,” advent of aerosal, tagging, the D train, anarcho-punk and Fab 5 Freddy, “Graffiti as Memorial”

Scrawl