In this poem Marilyn Dumont uses several figurative language techniques, including simile, metaphor, and personification to describe the handwriting of the speaker's mother.

For example, in the line, "Her sentences veered off the page like a drunk," Dumont uses a simile to compare her mother's handwriting to a drunk. The implication is that her handwriting veers and staggers unsteadily across the page as a drunk might veer and stagger unsteadily down a street. This is also an example of personification, as the writing is being credited with human characteristics.

A little later in the poem, Dumont, still describing her mother's handwriting, says, "her "o's" collapsed in on themselves / exhausted." Describing the o's as "exhausted" is another example of personification. By using personification here, Dumont creates a more vivid, and also more humorous image of the mother's handwriting.

From another quotation, "her 'I's' and 't's' were left / broken twigs on the page," we can identify a metaphor. The mother's handwriting is described as "broken twigs," suggesting that the handwriting is jagged, messy, and perhaps indecipherable.