a poem by stephanie bolster

(from a book of poems about the relationship(s) between Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves, Charles Lutwidge Dawson, Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland)

Portrait of Alice, Annotated

Who was it strung these footnotes

from her toes and scribbled

italics on her wrists, indicating perhaps

that only slim-wristed girls

were allowed to enter Wonderland?

They wound her with measuring tape,

noted the resulting data on her skin, figures

for chest and waist identical. To her mouth

was taped a parchment proclamation

detailing origins of those words she spoke

as if they were as intimately hers

as earlobes. But the evidence proved

those words had a long history of their own,

belonged to themselves and would

outlive her. Whatever she had said

to end up in this predicament

was not her fault, she was exempt, thus safe.

What could be done to her now? Even her breasts

were claimed before they'd risen; some said

he'd placed his nitrate-ridden hands there.

The critics overwrote each other

till all their words were tattooed black

upon her. Have mercy, she cried as they came

with the thousand-volumed weight of archives,

but those words were not hers either.

Bolster, Stephanie. "Portrait of Alice, Annotated" The Alice Poems. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1998.