Ellipses was inspired by a trinity of personal events: the deaths of both of Andrea MacPherson's grandmothers and the birth of her daughter. After the deaths of her two grandmothers, Andrea MacPherson came to realize that she did not really know their stories, and would not be able to ask them. In this collection she sets out to tell their stories, reimaging familiar lore to recreate the lives of these two extraordinary women. Ellipses reclaims the often obscured realities of motherhood, illness, and the struggles of these women for independence—in verse. This exploration leads to other marginalized voices in history—including Suzanne Valadon and the models who posed for Bellocq—and their stories. The poems in Ellipses are extractions, explorations, and, finally, moments of alternate life experiences that are so often left to the ... of historical record.

Gertrude at ninety-one

Suddenly aged:
fear perhaps
(inability to catch her breath
vertigo, the suggestion of something cardiac)
or all those years catching up

a sanatorium; a farm; a city;
two fingers of rye (no, three);
a long, slow death;
the air on her face in the early afternoon.

Now, white hair appears
and hands grasp at walls to steady:
push back, push away what’s to come.
There is still the cry of a sparrow in morning
still the view of water from your window.