November hymnal (25) /  Jack the Ripper letter, November 22, 1888

On a limited batch of stationery
A Pirie & Sons watermark

Also used for the artist’s
Family correspondence that year

Or in a painting in the painting
Multiple times bare necks black lined

Shadows or pearls or unexplained
Marks across an unconcerned open throat

A shape behind the nude model or sitting
on the bed’s edge as she lay there finished

He knew what the women looked like
Multiple times bare necks black lines

They would stand the victim on a hook
To document the wounds but when they

Could take photos of her on her bed after
All she was unconcerned that she was dead

Scribbles on the wall behind her at the margins
Of the camera’s focus and on the margins of the note

Sharper as the weather was at various hours
A violent spree where the ledger had been

Sketched with bodiless heads.
The person could not be hidden

So she was torn until she was a body
And then torn like a page

Where the ledger had been
Well formed if not elegant.

Which was the titled canvas
And which November’s taunt?

“What a pretty necklace I gave her”
“Am on the trail again”