‘portrait ex-vivo’
— Hannah Cohen
Winner of Hermeneutic Chaos’ 2016 Jane Lumley Prize, ‘portrait ex-vivo’ by Elizabeth Forsythe is proof that poetry is an organism existing outside our own selves. This piece is haunting in its images of lungs, brains, flowers and doctors, with the speaker conflicted between the here and not-here. We’re told that “the lungs can be kept alive outside of the body the brain cannot”, which only intensifies the numbered sections, lowercase “i”, and the use of ampersands throughout the poem. Forsythe is masterful in her pauses and white space, and ‘portrait ex-vivo’ is truly a study of the infinitesimal and uncontainable.