Trickster Figure

Meri Sanders
→BFA TX 2026

Meri Sanders, Trickster Figure, riso-printed booklet, 4 x 11.5 in.

Lay beneath,

Beneath whom?

Beneath this phantom limb of a tree

Collide with your senses and meld together

What story have you written for yourself, for me to witness

This phantom limb has questions, you see, and a story of its own

May you learn not to clench your fists so tightly

Let your hands map the soil

The garden bed

The hillside

May this pull from the tips of your fingers let you

lunge

the rest of your body closer,

closer.

If not for these heels

to dig

just a little further into the ground

than the rest

Then what else?

Might I ask of you

Why this strain in your step,

What brought about this weight

dropped on your shoulders

that has echoed through your bones

Your stride turned to ache

A clunky waltz washed away.

You’ve lost your color along with the seams of your jacket

Is this what you’ve done with my sweet summertime?

Tell me, where must this time go?

Line

Pointed forward

Then down

Skip your turn

Trip on the rock

Stub your toe

Now your knee is bleeding.

You followed the line pointed forward and down enough times to know that this paved route has kept something from you for quite some time now

Help me lift this curtain and reveal your next steps

So that you don’t skip your turn

Or trip on the rock

Or stub your toe

I am working towards a culmination of translation, a means of communicating with and understanding my surroundings, through mending, conversing, observing, and writing.

I began this process by spending time and making notes at the Regenerative Earth Collective Garden. This long-term act of close looking allowed me to engage with the everyday networks and systems at the garden. I looked at the ways in which nature interacts with man-made structures, the acts of curating a space to accommodate plants and people, and the practices that require people’s hands to aid in the preservation and growth of a plot. These notes allowed me to fixate on what I call the “seams” and “meeting places” of the garden, where the bricks meet the plants, the greenhouse to the ground, the retting flax to the soil, and so on.

In tandem, I examined several sources, most significantly On Mending by Celia Pym, volume IV of The New Farmer’s Almanac, and Planetary Realism by Josephine Berry. These texts widened my scope of repair networks from people to people, people to land, and land to people. It imbued me with the notion that land must be treated as a person; it deserves the same language and care that we honor each other with. We must engage with the soil beneath our feet the same way we engage with our loved ones, with ongoing kinship and reciprocity.

My research began to take shape when I started repairing clothing belonging to close friends of mine, the goal being to engage with the intimacies of objects that at first glance do not hold the same value to me as they do to others. This practice directly builds community and engages with repair to preserve the lifespan of a textile, reflecting the care and reciprocity of the REC Garden.

Writing came as I repaired these garments in the garden, sitting side by side with my friends, whose textiles I was actively stitching. The writing came naturally as another translation of these relationships between people, place, and textile, creating a space to circulate what I gained from the texts I was reading. I fixated on a quote from Haraway and Stengers in Planetary Realism, where they write, “The world is a trickster figure that won’t let itself be watched.” This line carries great weight because it refers to the land with the same language that we use to refer to people. This principle made room for numerous tangents, lessons, and stories to be told, all of which influenced my writing practice—the poems that appear in the booklet and below.

Exploring relationships between writing, observing, conversing, and mending taught me the non-

linearity of creating and understanding, the slow, process-driven way of looking, listening, and responding to the earth and to people. The world is, in fact, a trickster figure, a being hidden in plain sight. We must offer the Earth the same grace we offer each other, to earn respect and build reciprocity.

Meri Sanders is very busy people-watching from their studio window.