Back From the Dead

Abstract

Back From the Dead Emily Blair (bio) Did you fake the whole thing? Land like a cat on a cliff-side ledge? Leave someone else to perish in the fishing shack explosion? Was there a crazy plan involving latex masks, bungee cords and a well-trained team of illusionists? Are you a victim of amnesia? Hypnosis? A shifting sense of self? Perhaps you're just way out of cellphone range. You'll be found frolicking on a desert island with a really fit companion by a passing Portuguese fishing vessel—or lying atop a misty mountain by elves who give you new life, improved powers and a fresh look. Maybe you're waiting right now at the bottom of this lake. Is that you rising in a pillar of fire? Walking out of the white light? Raving in the undergrowth? Did your coffin soar through space to land on a planet where the Genesis Device had been detonated by a madman? Is it voodoo? An ancient burial ground? Another religion radically misinterpreted by non-practitioners? Did a crow tap your headstone with its beak nine times like a legend some jerk just made up on the spot? Is that you on the roof wailing on a guitar? Are you only pretending to be a ghost because you feel a bit awkward? Or are you in fact an alien who has studied the memories that run like home movies through my mind all the time? Are you going to haunt me forever? I'm free every night this week. When are you coming by? [End Page 45] Emily Blair Emily Blair's poetry has appeared in Sixth Finch, The Mississippi Review and Women's Studies Quarterly, among others. She received a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry in 2014 and in Fiction in 2006, and she is the author of the illustrated chapbook Idaville (Booklyn Artists' Alliance, 2010). Copyright © 2017 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents