Book of the Dead Woman

Poetry

Size / / /

Mary Alexandra Agner

Issue: 20 July 2009

for Alli Sheldon

I build you out of argument.

Dissension makes you live

the undead life between my pages

rather than the worlds you wrote.

I do not want what Mary Shelley made:

hard bone, electric light, the shock of pubic hair.

Just talk to me.

I'd eat your inconsistencies

and read the songs of my entrails.

Your genius frisson goads me.

What will I find in your dead book

to criticize my size and shape

as I reanminate what history

has trunked instead of gloried?

Mary Alexandra Agner is the author of The Doors of the Body (Mayapple Press). Her poems are forthcoming in Goblin Fruit, Naugatuck River Review, and Science Editor. All her life she's observed the universe and written about it. She can be found online at http://www.pantoum.org/. More of her work can be found in our archives.

About Mary Alexandra Agner

Mary Alexandra Agner writes of dead women, telescopes, and secrets. Her poetry, stories, and nonfiction have appeared in The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Shenandoah, and Sky & Telescope, respectively. She can be found online at http://www.pantoum.org.

for Alli Sheldon

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