Diorama 1871 (if there is one girl, there must be two)

Diorama 1871 (if there is one girl, there must be two) Catie Rosemurgy (bio) They say just before the fire arrived, animals came pouring silentlyout of the forest, all kinds together, heading to the river,"enemies and friends," their tongues hanging out. For days before, the sun was "red" and "swollen,""many times its normal size."The moon was "not itself." The earth is always trying to show us howto survive going mad. When my love runs away, I stop moving and mark her trail like an axe blaze on a tree.She never stops moving. Even when she lies frozen on the ground,her pupil still darts quickly, a whole other creature living in her head.Maybe it's been too long since I've had a friend.Haven't you ever felt like a rough man,caked with disuse, as if you'd wandered a hundred miles awayfrom your own softness, from even a scrap of soft clothto rub against your skin?Then you look down and see a bolt of silk. Not once like such a man?Okay, neither have I. I keep going deeper into the crosshatched woods becauseI've decided what it is I'm tracking now:whatever is the most unreal. Whenever someone holds me down, whenever someone usestheir body weight to make me literal, I stand backand pet my true foxes, their vainglorious pelts,the hand-sized, satisfying tops of their heads. End Page 258 They lack horns, but they stand by mewith their ears, like horns, poking up.When she needs to get away, she runs silentlywith any proximate beast, her tongue hanging out,many times her normal size. I first saw her up ahead on a trail above the river.Here are the notes I took on her behavior: agilefast and rosyblonde, not slight, robust doesn't hear questions but does hearpraise about her climbingdoesn't wince when she falls when I smiled, she took off,ran, skipped, hopped,flew Whole forests of trees wait for such girls. End Page 259 Catie Rosemurgy Catie Rosemurgy is the author of two books of poems, My Favorite Apocalypse and The Stranger Manual, both from Graywolf Press. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Pew Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at the College of New Jersey. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press