An excerpt from
White Stone: The Alice Poems
by Stephanie Bolster
Still Life
I've got it too, that knack
for sitting still while inner
ticking hammers every
nerve and the universe
runs on like a white rabbit,
Alice's frantic tardy heart
invisible inside a cage
of lace. Now past the need
for poses, we let video take us
where and as we are.
If I could see her move,
know the way her sleeve
folded as she shifted her wrist
to write her name,
would it be like opening
a door into a garden?
I let her history fall shut
and move into my moving body.
Victoria's dead, this isn't
England, and Alice was never
just that taxidermied girl
through Dodgson's lens,
that woman's face looming
in my dark room.
When the camera turned
away, she ran. Since I began
to seek her, I've found
love, moved to a land
white as a page. I rarely stop
to think of her these days.