Group Portrait 1244403

Abstract

Group Portrait 1244403 Lisa Olstein (bio) The archival body has a complicated history with numbers. Numbers themselves are a kind of archive. History is a kind of body. Bodiless, memory archives architected time. Early on, maybe, a robin. Later, perhaps, a rabbit. Out of order, she fell in love with a boy some twenty years too early or late. “I’ll howl like a wolf, you howl like a coyote,” the boy said, “so we can find each other in the thick woods.” Despite all appearances to the contrary, the archive has few rules. Presence stands in for absence. Darkness stands in for light. Shape stands in for body. Posture stands in for erudition, assimilation; dog stands in for leisure, morsel for delight. A silhouette is the shadow’s revenge. Upon individual actors, this system does not depend.1 There are therefore Provincial Faces, National Lips and Noses, which testify not only [to] the Natures of those Countries, but of those which have them elsewhere.2 Silly dog, the archive has no archive for this. You better marry rich. Pets make dirt. No dogs or Jews allowed. [End Page 87] Lisa Olstein Lisa Olstein’s most recent book of poems is Little Stranger; a new collection, Late Empire, is forthcoming in 2017. She is a member of the poetry faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. Footnotes 1. This inverts a sentence by Robin DiAngelo, White Women’s Tears and the Men Who Love Them (2015). 2. Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals (1716). Copyright © 2016 American Jewish Historical Society