Of the Mind

Abstract

Of the Mind Laura Newbern (bio) Keywords Laura, Newbern, disappearance, death, Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, poetry There were the days when Agatha Christie disappeared.Even though she'd sent off a note, saying where she was. There was her car, left at the lip of a pit, near a placecalled The Silent Pool, which was said to be bottomless. She was a suicide, said the papers. There was the car,and the road, and the dark. There was even her dog— brought to the scene, it stood there and whined.And there were the men—so many—photographed among trees, searching in groups, in their feltsand tweeds, in the silver gelatin trees, in the thin woods. But it was not like Virginia Woolf; she was nota body, prone in a river. She was upright, lodged at one of the bigger, brighter spas in the country,under her husband's lover's name. She was not in the pit, not in the silent, bottomless pool.And yet she was. Of course that was where she was. [End Page 287] Laura Newbern laura newbern is the author of Love and Eye and the recipient of a Writer's Award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Her work has appeared in Barrow Street, The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic, and elsewhere; she teaches at Georgia College and edits the journal Arts & Letters. "Of the Mind" is from a new manuscript called A Night in the Country. Copyright © 2021 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.