Stephanie Kaylor: Unidentified Woman
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN WITH MULTIPLE TATTOOS WHOSE DECOMPOSING BODY WAS FOUND IN AN ABANDONED HOME
dreams of leaving purgatory, dreams
of flour on her hands, not these
blisters, burns, chipped polish on
her nails, their borderlines bleeding
into space dissolving dreams of here or
there
in El Paso, Mama said there was
no such thing as racism: the whites
kept to themselves while the others
kept to theirs, and she was gone
now, married a man, changed her
name from Maria to Mary. Mama
said to put sunscreen on your skin
to hide it from the sun, not these
tattoos
filling her body like a calendar
counting down the days from
origin to synthesis, no borders,
no walls, no windows left unbroken
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN SINGLE CAR WRECK, ESTIMATED DAMAGE TO VEHICLE SET AT $10,000
In Okeechobee, Florida all train traffic was
halted until the tracks were repaired &
in the orange groves the cargo waited,
the men came equipped: drills & ledgers,
borderlines, unnecessary dust, the cause
still undetermined. Up the road a battle-
field where they once named death “old
rough and ready.” It was called the Second
Seminole War as if the first had ever
ended, gunfire searing through like a
highway on which drivers simply change
lanes as Unidentified Woman’s body
crumples before them. They hold re-
enactments to raise money for its
preservation each year while a car
without a driver is taken to the shop,
Unidentified Woman awaiting their
instruments: calipers, retractors, the
tie around the tongue allowing them
to look into the pharynx & try to
find a name.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN TOLD POLICE SHE VOLUNTEERED TO HAVE HER ARM CUT AND FINGER CUT OFF. SHE WAS NOT UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DRUGS OF ALCOHOL WHEN THE INCIDENT OCCURRED
It wasn’t needed. Her fingers
only incidental-- what was there
to grasp? A ghost, a song, a
preface to the story she lacked
the pen to write? Unidentified
Woman told Jonathan already--
you can take these hands if no
one’s going to call me when they’re
raised; you can let this blood if
it’s only extra weight; you can take
these legs that have no place left
to run, and Jonathan, I see you
going far.
It wasn’t needed. The men wanted
a ritual, not the persistence of
flesh but the sanctity of its
obstruction. A shot of blood, a
pinky finger pointing out toward
the stars or toward the
ground, but away from the core
of Unidentified Woman, away
from the sex she’d stroke on
sleepless nights once Jonathon
turned off the lights, the unattended.
Unidentified Woman abandons her-
self, manicured & ready, toenails
polished just incase.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN FOUND STRANGLED, BURNED, HER BREAST IMPLANTS TRACED TO A DALLAS CLINIC
After strangling her, he washed his hands while his
friend took a turn on her corpse. He does not call it
a corpse, he calls it Her with his fingers in its tousled
hair, finds a dovish motherliness to wrap around himself
in her eyes rolled back into a parenthetical, a wasted
day unscripted & underway folded into jokes of shop-
lifting since even the police wouldn’t call it rape when
they learned of her high heels made of some plastic clear
as his conscious, the tattoo on her lower back. Most of
it burnt off, could only identify her by the globes in her
chest, the only parts left unscathed after he took the
canister of gasoline, made sure he wouldn’t dirty his yard.
Stephanie Kaylor is a writer from upstate New York. She holds a MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University at Albany and is currently finishing a MA in Philosophy at the European Graduate School. Stephanie is Managing Editor for Five:2:One Magazine and Reviews Editor for Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Queen Mob’s Teahouse, BlazeVOX, The Willow Review, and altpoetics and she tweets at @sm_kaylor
