submerged their stories into others till each name

became an elegy, and every name dissolved.

My name is Paisley. Your name is Paisley as well.

The softened thunder sounds its distant footsteps.

It is raining in the vales of Kashmir, Scotland, Utah.

Beloved, let us watch, and get our faces wet.

Come: let us sit together under this shawl.

Notes

NOTES

“Letter from the Pribilofs”: In 1879, Elizabeth Beaman, the daughter of a prominent Washington, DC, family, lived with her husband, John Warren Beaman, on the Alaskan Pribilof Islands. She wrote about her time in letters and journals that were later edited and published by her granddaughter, Betty John, in a volume titled Libby: The Alaskan Diaries and Letters of Libby Beaman, 1879–1880.

“Olive Oatman in Texas”: Olive Oatman’s story has been the account of many artworks, novels, films, and radio plays, including Oatman’s own influential The Captivity of the Oatman Girls, which the Reverend Royal B. Stratton helped her write and publish in 1857. In 2009, Margot Mifflin published her own comprehensive biography, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman.

“Shooting the Skulls”: In 1993, hundreds of skeletons were unearthed from the grounds of the Colorado Mental Health Institute, tagged and numbered by the late forensic anthropologist Dr. J. Michael Hoffman. While little is known about the individuals interred in the grounds, several of the skulls bore marks of syphilis and were likely the remains of patients who had been abandoned or forgotten by their families. Many of the skulls were photographed by the artist Andrea Modica and published in her monograph Human Being.

“The History of Paisley”: This poem takes its title from Agha Shahid Ali’s “A History of Paisley,” from his book The Country without a Post Office.

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paisley Rekdal is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee; a hybrid-genre photo-text memoir that combines poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and photography titled Intimate; and four other books of poetry: A Crash of Rhinos, Six Girls without Pants, The Invention of the Kaleidoscope, and Animal Eye, winner of the UNT Rilke Prize. Her work has received the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, an NEA Fellowship, and various state arts council awards. She teaches at the University of Utah and is the creator and editor of the community web history archive project Mapping Salt Lake City.

Also by Paisley Rekdal

Also by Paisley Rekdal

POETRY

Animal Eye

The Invention of the Kaleidoscope

Six Girls without Pants

A Crash of Rhinos

NONFICTION

Intimate: An American Family Photo Album

The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

North American Review: “Mae West: Advice,” “Philip Larkin’s Koan”

At Length: poems of the “Shooting the Skulls” section

Connotation Press: “Letter from the Pribilofs

Diode: “The History of Paisley”

The Journal: “Irises”

Kenyon Review: “A Peacock in a Cage,” “Mortal Love,” “Assemblage of Ruined Plane Parts”

The Literary Review: “Once”