Hannah Maynard (1834-1918) was one of the first professional woman photographers in British Columbia; from 1884 to 1896 she created a series of surreal self-portraits believed to be in response to her teenage daughter’s death by typhoid.

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I will hang myself in picture frames
in drawing rooms where grief
is not allowed a wicker chair

then grimace back at this facade
from umbrella eyes
through a cave of silvering hair.

Look! I’ve learned to slice myself in three
to sit politely at the table
with ginger punch and teacake;

offer thin-lipped graves
of pleasantries. I develop myself
in the pharmacist’s chemicals

three women I’m loathe to understand—
presences I sometimes cajole
into porcelain light and shadow.

We culminate in a silver gelatin scene—
a daughter birthed from a spiral shell,
a keyhole tall enough to strut through.

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Susan Rich is the author of five books, most recently, Cloud Pharmacy, shortlisted for the Julie Suk prize honoring poetry books from independent presses. She has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, PEN USA Award for Poetry and the Times (of London) Literary Supplement Award. Her poems appear in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine, and Witness. Along with Kelli Russell Agodon, she’s co-founder of  Poets on the Coast, a writing retreat for women, now in its 9th year. Susan lives and writes in Seattle. You can find her on-line at The Alchemist’s Kitchen and follow her on Twitter at @susanrichpoet.

Photos by Hannah Maynard, courtesy of BC Archives (public domain).

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