The Alchemy of My Mortal Form

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