Fragment of a Bride

Relative to status and state, one often finds the strategic depiction of an implicated myth: man v. god, fire, female, followed by a beeline drawn to the end of the garden. Outside, the concrete sky and a clamor that might be described as a deafening mechanical distraction, the basic rhythm of which has been set in advance to match a harsh song that goes like this: metalwork-always-outlives-fabric. That mess of a crumpled net dress at the bottom of a wardrobe might be a refusal to accept the notion that possibility is something one puts on to go out: a woman for example could still wear the dress but where would she go looking like that? It would be an error to describe her as someone who doesn’t know how she is supposed to act, when in actual fact she is acting. Her eyes are open and she is acting like someone looking into a box of scattered catastrophes, saying to the man next to her, “Look at these. Which one would you like?”

From A Doll for Throwing by Mary Jo Bang. Copyright © 2017 by Mary Jo Bang. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.