The Girl Detective

Abstract

The Girl Detective Jeannine Hall Gailey (bio) was born looking for clues.In pockets, in closets, behind staircasesand lighthouses, in the ashes of the housethat caught on fire. I’m searching for tracesof computer code, for digital signatures,for fingerprints on goblets, for the soundtrackof the mystery series that is my life. I was bornwith titian hair and a penchant for secrets. When you lose your mother, you keep searchingeverywhere for her. You keep a lock of her hairin your diary. You keep a key that onceopened a safe that no longer exists.There’s no such thing as ghosts,but you keep seeing them anyway. With so many hidden cameras now, so manycell phones, you’d think you wouldn’t need meskulking in the shadows, trailing the suspect,adding things up and taking away the receipts.But there’s always a false bottom to the drawer,a hidden passage, a trap door, a note the murdervictim left before she died in invisible ink,or scrawled on a window. A scarf the policedidn’t notice. A footprint. That’s it: the things we lose aren’t alwaysso easy to track. The ghosts we seek stay just beyond [End Page 113] our reach. But don’t worry; I won’t leave my post.My blue convertible a chariot for lost souls.I’ll be here, always vigilant for that missedconnection, a guidepost for the misplaced. [End Page 114] Jeannine Hall Gailey Jeannine Hall Gailey is a poet with multiple sclerosis who served as the second poet laureate of Redmond, Washington. She’s the author of six books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Field Guide to the End of the World (winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the Elgin Award), and the upcoming Flare, Corona from BOA Editions. She has a bs in biology and ma in English from the University of Cincinnati and an mfa from Pacific University. Her work has appeared in such journals as the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and POETRY magazine. Visit www.webbish6.com and @webbish6 (Twitter and Instagram) Copyright © 2021 University of Nebraska Press