by Jessica Goodfellow
an image on the retina | the last thing ever |
seen | before death it was believed |
& it could be retrieved |
by ‘fixing’ | like a photograph |
-ic negative | with the pigment rhodopsin | also known as visual purple |
in an alum | solution |
to the question of | where memory goes after |
death | retina imagined as a photograph | -ic plate | continually |
recording image after image| while at the same time |
erasing the one before | until only the last |
remained | caveat: if during a moment of intense |
emotion | terror, say, or anger or shock |
when pupils are dilated | the recorded image would be |
clearer & easier to retrieve | decapitation being one such ideal |
circumstance | the technique, then |
was shown to work | well enough to satisfy | contemporary standards |
when applied to a late 19th century albino rabbit |
first beheaded & then with retinas cut out |
& bleached overnight in alum | the object of |
the rabbit’s final gaze | appeared | evidence of body as a record of everything that ever |
if you count | three vertical lines | | |
as proof of having been |
in a room | with barred windows | as proof of being caged |
at the time |
of death
where in the body isn’t | memory stored |
before | death or | after |
when is the body not | | | stained with a purpled cage |
Jessica Goodfellow’s books are Whiteout (University of Alaska Press, 2017), Mendeleev’s Mandala (Mayapple Press, 2015), and The Insomniac’s Weather Report (Isobar Press, 2011). She’s had work in Best American Poetry, Beloit Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Ploughshares, Scientific American, The Southern Review, and Threepenny Review. Jessica is an American poet living in Japan.