Inspired by displays at a small natural history museum, the poems in Lisa Allen Ortiz’s collection are about what we set aside to examine and remember. The quirky, scientific lens—grimy, focused, funny, always illuminating—animates the odd and overlooked. With humility and curiosity, Ortiz is moved to learn how to see more clearly both as lover and as griever. Speaking the names of things—animals, skeletons, teeth, feathers—is a way of connecting with the complications of being alive. How does the stillness of an exhibit encourage us toward love and joy? Does studying details increase the pleasure of felt experience? Ortiz pays close attention to love while death and sorrow lurk nearby. “Survival is the mutest joy,” she writes. Guide to the Exhibit looks outward and reflects, examines, links, and contradicts.
A painted meadowlark on a painted fallen log,
sketch of canyon and field done in ochre strokes.
The snake inside is still as art, convict-striped,
glass-eyed—and real.
Snake, I also was born in the forest and I also danced
on a done-up stage, hair ribbons pressed over my ears.
Back then each animal had its lair. Now the meadows,
the trees are all painted to give us a feel.
Only a fool holds onto place. To survive, make the place
you are look like home. Snake, this is the song of the kept.
See the crack in the painted sky? Soon the herpetologist
will open the back of your world. He’ll reach in and lift you
to twist in the air, coil the length of his arm, your primitive
three-chambered heart will shiver in its three-chambered sac.
This is affection—this tender art they made of you, this use.
The man will study your eyes and skin.
He will measure and weigh. He will note your mood.
Let him study. Let him see.
Listen to “Patois,” read by Lisa Allen Ortiz at Perugia Press’s 20th anniversary celebration at Smith College on November 12, 2016: