by Gail Wronsky
Hippolyta
the Amazon
picks up
dead sparrows and performs
taxidermy on them.
Then she dresses them
in handmaid sweaters
and scarves.
She
names them:
Peaseblossom
Dmitri
Evanescence
Beach
and so on and lines them up carefully
in a dresser drawer. What occurs there for her-
a mediation of the desired
image of the self
as mother?
The self as
healer?
The
self as
redeemer of death?
In the
documentary someone
made about her
Hippolyta is being led by an old woman down
a narrow street
somewhere in Manhattan.
A breeze
not unlike the breeze that
wafts
through the Parisian apartment in
Un Chien Andalou
lifts her cape
revealing a shocking amount of body hair. Only
because
the thick
hair
is on the body
of another woman
does it seem desirable
to her friend Titania. Only because he, too, would
like to be warm
does her lover imagine himself
frequently as an object
of Hippolyta’s post-
mortum
ministrations
although
being immortal
he realizes this is an idle
dream.