Poetry by Jennifer A. Sutherland
Alcestis as the Dead Woman’s Auto-Roman à Clef
BUtterfield 8 (novel, 1935; film, 1960)
Starr Faithfull, 1906-1931
Here’s Melpomene, two times over, replicated,
and here’s the scene: a man, his wife, and me in her fur
coat. For warmth, for modesty, and for dignified
egress when I had nothing else to wear the morning
after. It’s a riot. Now I’m dead. This little distance
brings the camera into focus. I thought he’d be
the roadway out and I climbed in. He popped
the clutch. And I fell out. Would you say it’s funny,
my red Sunbeam Alpine roadster struck a roadblock, flew,
curvaceous hood streaking over sleek and gleaming tail,
and snuffed me out atop a mound of concrete rubble? Or
when the writer dropped me in the water lapping
at a steamboat’s paddle, whichever means of manual
destruction of the muse that you prefer. Does it matter? Anyway,
it wasn’t ecstasy or tragedy, you can’t say that you don’t like
the speed when your foot’s on the accelerator, can you? Move
over, friend, some stories write the endings for themselves
and that’s all that there is to them. Auto-written, autoerotic,
automotive, autocratic. You’ll go on dressing me inside
that coat, naked underneath because as far as you can tell I’m Liz
Taylor. But I’m so much older. Older than the girl they based
the story on, older even than this kind of fiction, the lyric
wrinkling back upon itself: a secret message on an envelope.
Where drama equals one plus one, I’m twenty-nine or thirty.
Are you thinking what I’m speaking? I’m the figure fierce
inside the animal, the ripples on the greasy pelt standing
in for what’s beneath, the woman who is still alive, the proof
of life. She has done so many things
that she should not have done and caused such pain
and oh, they were delicious while I did them.
Alcestis as Peripheral | Swift | Ominous Movement in the House
The eye’s focus accumulates upon a central field,
a swiveling musculature. A kitchen table. Beneath the membrane,
a lens records. Text upon the skene observed: [A toddler in his favorite overalls]
Text: [A plate of seedless grapes and a sippy cup.]
Workmen ring the willow tree, tuck
their ruddy hands into their pockets. Someone heaves an axe [. . .]
Text: [The tree falls.] The television
has been left to play its narrative, a field of players also like an eye
but looking back. From the landing atop the stairs,
Admetus thunders toward your instrument.
His shape is not inside your processor, not yet,
the eye has not been taught the precursive code, requiring
first the distillation of experience into digits. [Zero, one.] Assessment
as a kind of death or lingering internal reconfiguration.
Assessment as a prerequisite to pain, to sense,
which is prerequisite to leaving. When you regain consciousness
you will think about this more. The field will lie in darkness for an hour
or two. Alcestis is alive and dead, not here or there nor she nor I.
Jennifer A. Sutherland is the author of Bullet Points: A Lyric, finalist for the Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur and Foreword Indies Poetry Book of the Year, and the forthcoming collection, House of Myth and Necessity. Both are available from River River Books. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in Plume, Birmingham Poetry Review, EPOCH, Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore.
Arcturus 