Sampling a fragment from Yedda Morrison’s Girl Scout Nation (Displaced Press, 2008); cf. trauma in the previous post. In Morrison’s work trauma is distributed, refunctioned, “naturalized.” Poet and ideal reader become identified the inviolable/violated figure of the Girl Scout who must see behind nature’s naturalization, where she finds:

in that stalker suit you’re hard to see         
tracking prey against the wind         
song of the bludgeoned Killdeer         
oft empty twang         
(we didn’t see it)         

one looks for clues in the natural world         
when girls go missing         
for example the hair wad smells woodsy         

and over the charred and glittery landscape         
a thing         
overgrown         
extends and sticks         
to the pallid thickness [1:26]         

 I am in agreement with Gail Scott’s comment on the back jacket: “I love this book!”

 

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