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.