Winged Alice and the Keyblade of Doom

Your cigarette blown words
lodge firmly in my back.

Losing a toe or three 
keeps me swaying on the beam.

My fluted mouth stiffens.
I drop more than my shirt 
in the parading maze of dazed revelers
sweating in the Carnival swelter.

Twinned but not;
best friend for never.
Dissected from skin to bone.
The stripes on my pants are all wrong.

The paper mache grizzly,
the Army green ginger,
neither fits.
Your German blonde elevates you
to the balcony scene.

Keeping my mask carefully blank,
I fall into beta position.

In the garbage piled streets,
no one wants to vomit alone.

Miriam Angel falls down the Rabbit Hole

I fell completely down the Rabbit Hole this week.  

Welcome to Wonderland.  

If you see Alice, give her my best.

Instead of working with my image of Mary Jane Kelly 

(I have been tinkering with it for weeks - 

decided it was best to let it simmer for a while), 

I found that my mind kept coming

 back to Miriam Angel.

I went back to the internet and poked around 

a little more.  I found an in depth article 

from 1887 about the trial which went into more 

of the specifics and particulars of the case.  

I did learn that Miriam Angel was indeed married 

and she was killed in the morning after her husband 

left for work, but that is about all we 

learn about Miriam herself.

The article does a nice job of covering the trial, 

so if  you are interested, just click HERE.

There are several discrepancies between this article 

and some of the other sources that I have found.  

The names of Israel Lipski's employees are 

slightly different in this article and he is 

referred to as a maker of walking sticks 

whereas, elsewhere, he has been called 

an umbrella salesman.

Since Lipski claimed that his two employees were 

really the perpetrators of the horrific crime, 

I would be interested to know what paths 

their lives followed after Lipski was executed. 

 If they were the thieves and rapists that Lipski 

claimed, I would expect that they would 

commit further crimes, but I haven't seen any 

references to this anywhere on the internet.

Of course, it has been 125 years.

Still, I always come back to the nitric acid.  

Why did Lipski buy it?  At different times, 

he said he intended to use it to stain wood.  

Later he said that he intended to drink it 

to take his own life.  It was the method used 

to kill Miriam Angel.  Lipski never satisfactorily 

explains why his two employees would 

have possession of the acid instead.

I keep coming back to that little bottle which brings 

my mind instantly to Alice and Wonderland.  

Add in the questionable umbrellas and there is only one
 direction to go - straight down the rabbit hole!

I had a strange compulsion to make this piece. 

 It felt a little insensitive to the memory of 

Miriam Angel and her child, but it has been 

125 years.  Sorry, Miriam!

Two pieces in and I still cannot get the case out of my head.  

Be warned that more Miriam Angel is to follow.