Voices and Vessels:
A Confluence of Ideas and Passion
in Fine Press Books and Broadsides
MY ARCHITECT
by Sherman Alexie
Title lettering by Marilyn Reaves.
Printed on buff-colored Yatsuo paper from Japan in an edition of 115 numbered and signed copies.
8.5 x 20 inches. Price: $70.
To inquire about purchasing this work,
please contact Laura at 23 Sandy.
MY ARCHITECT
Sherman Alexie
During the night, a spider build its web
in and around our mailbox. I search
for the thing, hoping it doesn’t have a red
hourglass on its belly, before I reach
into the box—brushing aside the web,
breaking the whole into fine, sticky threads—
and pull out catalogs, postcards, ads, dead
letters, bills, sweepstakes and all the evidence
of an ordinary life. This happens
every morning for a week. I destroy
what the spider creates. Human sadness
and spider sadness, my joy and its joy,
are alien emotions. The unseen
spider might be incapable of grief
at this destruction. It might never weep
or mourn its losses. Does this spider need
to celebrate the daily construction
and reconstruction of its web, its home,
its killing floor? I only ask these questions
because I want to confess and atone
for the small sin of valuing my life
more than the life of this nameless spider,
who rebuilds its damn web for seven nights.
This eight-legged architect, street fighter,
union worker and guerilla soldier
will not surrender to me. I admire
this spider, though what I see as boldness
is likely the dumb instinct to survive
and replicated, to give birth, to mother
hundreds of children, to construct these webs,
each one identical to the others,
to repeat, repeat, repeat until death.
On the eighth morning, the spider is gone.
Briefly, I grieve this loss and am surprised,
briefly, by my grief, before I return,
return, return to my dumb and brief life.