1 excerpt
from Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners
Between cascade and lakelet appear irregular
vine-fringed mouths She must carry the capacity
to be read Keep eyes fixed upon facts
Receive images as they are “The world demands
proof of woman’s work I am unwilling
it should lose its feminine identity”
____________________
What interested me was
the way ladies survive
as acknowledgements
in other people’s prefaces
the way historians will not
see women in the museum
unless she seeks them out
a catalog of eighty thousand cards
on the family Gramineae
a gentle knock of nerve
this process of a false body
____________________
Into the concept of notation
Miss Agnes Chase rehearsed demeanor
a strange and almost startling appearance
relegated to the notes for other interested researchers
a beverage deemed suitable for a feminine throat
____________________
To record subtle changes in sky color
A grid of permanence
Ultramarine Blue
Cobalt Blue
Winsor Blue
Cadmium Yellow Pale
Cadmium Yellow Deep
Yellow Ochre
Indian Red
Cadmium Scarlet
Alizarin Crimson
Permalba her white
Sarah Mangold is a NEA fellow and the author of Giraffes of Devotion (Kore Press), Electrical Theories of Femininity (Black Radish Books), and Household Mechanics (New Issues), selected by C.D. Wright for the New Issues Poetry Prize. She lives near Seattle where she founded and edited the print journal Bird Dog: a journal of innovative writing and art.