Anna Leahy

“I constitute myself in the process of ‘posing,’ I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself into an image.”                     —Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes I imagined myself on the way to have my body stretched over the wheel, not later, when the angels came with lightning that sent spikes and splinters into the air. […]

Tincture of opium: a suffusing saturating permeating flood. Over the counter from the grocer, the barber, the baker. A painkiller, a cordial for irritable babies and bedwetting toddlers, to alleviate cough, gout, menopause, rheumatism, ulcers, cramps, bruises. Nothing anyone suffered could not be cured. Hard to know whether sadness is cause or effect, whether jealousy […]

I made a pretty painting, secured a reputation with Ophelia. The secret is laudanum—the floaty-floaty feeling— and the shiver-chill when the fire went out under the tub and left my teeth to clatter; that’s what created my pallor, gave the brush its worthy goal. I held my quiet pose, always anxious for verbal intercourse, though not […]