The Alchemy of My Mortal Form

<p>In The Alchemy of My Mortal Form poet Sandy Longhorn winner of the 2014 Louise Bogan award reveals a landscape of the body-its illness pain and medical treatment. Her book a meditation on veins arms wolves and the soul has a cohesive chronological order that reads more like a story than a collection. Longhorn's lush colloquial baroque unexpectedly rearranges the language of a fragile fevered body-handled medicated and managed by others- with imagery of a cursive spine a lucid secret and pairings like symptoms/solstice. Divided into sections of General Orders My Mortal Form and Glossary it is an epistolary tale addressed to an unknown Dear Madame from the perspective of a woman with an undefined illness in an unspecific place who has hoarded her scars and keeps accurate account of rashes wounds & spells of amnesia. Longhorn's world-building flourishes with interiority and strangeness. From sickling to refugee the narrator grapples with predictions traces the outline of her escape and forgives while raw metaphors of a body that is a salvaged wreck pulse with the strength of resilience</p><p><br></p>