November 16 - Ellaraine Lockie

Memorials

by Ellaraine Lockie

--As collected by Henry Wellcome in “The Medicine Man” exhibit at the British Museum of Natural History

Books bound by human skin

Ceremonial headdresses woven with the same

Human hide inscribed with handwriting

Mourning jewelry made from deceased hair

A gallbladder engorged with rice

An urn fastened together by bone fragments

beside a head baked and burnished in clay

A watercolor portraying a dead child

Another face painted half here half departed

Yet another waxed with a mask of death

Anatomical specimens framed

and entitled “Fragments of Jeremy”

Mummified bodies the epitome of immortality

Me, I’m content with one poem inscribed on paper

Remains committed to the museum of natural consequences

First published in The Raintown Review

Information of Henry Wellcome’s collections:

https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/bulletin_of_the_history_of_medicine/v079/79.2edmonson.html

Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded author of poetry, nonfiction books and essays.  Her chapbook, Where the Meadowlark Sings, won the 2014 Encircle Publication’s Chapbook Contest.  Her twelfth collection has been released as an internal chapbook, Love Me Tender in Midlife, in IDES from Silver Birch Press.  Other recent work has received the Women’s National Book Association’s Poetry Prize, Best Individual Collection from Purple Patch magazine in England for Stroking David's Leg, winner of the San Gabriel Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest for Red for the Funeral and The Aurorean's Chapbook Spring Pick for Wild as in Familiar. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh. She is currently judging the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contests for Winning Writers.