The Living Dead Woman as Synthographer

Imagine :: the sonnet in ambrotype ::
its god rays slanted :: perspective:: fish
-eyed :: the inkblot field :: its shallow
depth of focus :: her words’ kinetic

motion :: all vortex :: scaly bokeh :: she’s
not afraid of end-stopped lines ::
or negative space :: the wet plate’s
strange emulsion :: this poem is no

more expected than filigree ::
the villanelle once found :: erased::
the urn’s gone glitchier than grace ::
the muses beg encryption, their deaths

more rote prediction :: this couplet shrugs,
remains poetica :: half ars :: a glint of volta

The Living Dead Woman Contemplates
Her Place in a Natural Universe

she is no scientist, but can tell when Undark-
ness has sneaked inside head :: if whirring
were migraine :: if doctors were wisemen ::
her eyes would not look so port-wine

sad :: ankles would anchor dress :: she
would not capture fish in one prosthetic
hand :: nature :: she would simply understand
as one does apocrypha :: she would not mistake

trees or minute hands :: she could trust trout
to match tea dress :: how easy to claim
what isn’t motionful, she thinks :: that
which is not ours :: once before radium

revealed time :: once before martyrdom ::
she knew how to float outside water

The Living Dead Woman Is Not a Danger

to anyone except herself, her elbows
jarring thresholds :: how a nose misleads
being so far forward, hers seldom blows
discrete :: quivering curious in pantries,

not her own :: as if she were a dormouse
in search of seed :: but finding only tea
bags, past their prime, she browses ::
webby recipes for headache, nosebleed,

sluggish circulation :: for all her likes,
she finds herself disliking and disliked ::
but calls to mind collodion, how blight
blossoms, how rot and ruin refine ::

by accident :: malaise becoming
garden :: or canker of sublime

“Living Dead Woman” Image prompts by Brenda Mann Hammack, rendered with Midjourney, v6, 16 Jan.2004. https://mid-journey.ai/

Brenda Mann Hammack teaches folklore, women’s literature, digital storytelling, and creative writing at Fayetteville State University where she also serves as coordinator for the concentration in Creative and Professional Writing. She is managing editor of Glint Literary Journal. Hammack’s scholarly writing includes “Florence Marryat’s Female Vampire and the Scientizing of Hybridity” and “Sicker Ever After: The Invalid as Vampire in Fiction by Arabella Kenealy and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.”