Doll Studies: Forensics by Carol Guess
My rating: 4/5 cats
genius. what a wonderful idea: poetry based on the dioramas created by frances glessner lee back in the 40’s and 50’s to help train forensic detectives in the art of crime-scene interpretation. have you seen these things? they are incroyable. tiny little details with tiny little dolls and tiny little bottles and ropes and shoes and lamps. each one a crime scene. i have this book: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, that you should go out and get. and then you should read this book of poems which does an excellent job of humanizing these scenes.
i have gallantly taken photos of some of the scenes from my copy of the nutshell studies of unexplained death and typed out the corresponding poem. sorry for any loss of detail with my tiny camera, and you’re welcome.
You’re going to kill her. At least give her legs. She’s drinking from a shard of glass, bloomers cycling in rigor mortis. Pink garters chasten knitted stockings. A piece of soap pines for her dirt. Sauced on gin, perhaps she slipped. Stiff legs suggest she stiffened elsewhere. Dinner tasted of its tinfoil cover. Wainscoting grasps the tub in its fist. Gentlemen friends brought gin to her room, but somehow ‘Dark Bathroom’ is the scene of the crime. She’s open-ended. You can see up her skirt.No doubt she’s finished to the last doll pat. She’s swimming upside-down in flounces, drunk on water, the last thing she’ll taste. She’ll never listen to Sousa’s opus. Plessy v. Ferguson upholds the law.
The cabin was ours all winter. You paid for this, the sleek word ‘mistress’. I touched the gun because the gun touched you. I swear I didn’t do it, although your hair was something I could have. While you were sleeping I cut it, true. If they search my house they’ll find you in boxes, sweaters that smell of the way you walked. The shot came from behind. I heard her sigh into the job. Your wife had insurance; she made sure of that. Last to see you, I’m under suspicion. My prints aren’t on the ammunition.
Here’s the dollhouse wife asleep, night’s chores finished in miniature. What hangs above the infant’s head is red. I mean the way graffiti moves through trains, signaling who’s been and when. Her husband sleeps beside her on the floor. This dollhouse lesson has to do with time. I mean the way sound travels through a house asleep. Detectives learn to sweep a story clockwise for detail. Anyone might own a gun. Pink slippers run in place atop a popcorn rug.
i love this idea. love it. even if i don’t love each and every poem with all my heart, i love the concept and 93% of the execution.
long, slow, sincere applause.
