blackmail press 31  Marginalization
Jeni Curtis
New Zealand

Marginalization - Pauline Canlas Wu
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(Dr) Jeni Curtis teaches English at St Andrew’s College, Christchurch, New Zealand. She is President of the Christchurch branch of the Dickens Fellowship, and editor of their magazine, Dickens Down Under. She has published poems in the Christchurch Press and International Literature Quarterly. She is currently enrolled in the Hagley Community College Writers Course.
In the Margins


You are the edge of the white page

The edge of the page striped with blue lines

Regular, uniform

You escape that

Liminal, the border patrol

You regulate

Enumerate

It is your tally that counts off

Their sins, their tabulations

Onetwothreefour

Particularise abcd

Or a random ticking off

Scribbled annotation to the main text

In red pen

You tell them how to punctuate their lives

Spapsentence structure



You dwell in the edges of the printed page

White space

Annotator

You put the gloss on others’ words

Jupiter Elucidator

The polish on the argument

While you lurk

Not lost for words

No margin for error

Along the boundaries, beyond the pale

Alone on the threshold

Marginalized.