White Rabbit in a Snowstorm

Abstract

White Rabbit in a Snowstorm delves into the relationship between grief and the body; it is a portrait of loss where white space, or absence, becomes a visual enactment of silence. The fictional painting that informs this collection, (originally titled Rabbit in a Snowstorm from the television series Daredevil), acts as a foreground in which the speaker discusses their experience with domestic abuse through anecdotes and experimentations of form. In utilizing the second person address throughout these poems, it is as if the referential you also represents a form of complicity. In doing this, absence, as a medium, becomes its own form of witnessing. This manuscript is meant to challenge a reader’s expectation of genre by breaking traditional forms of storytelling such as in Chloe. Here, the integration of poetry and prose results in fragments that mirror a discordant sense of reality, one in which parental addiction represents one of the few sources of stability in a child’s life. Similarly, fiction also parallels reality by reimagining mythological figures such as Iphigenia and Agamemnon through dramatic monologues, whose relationship is structured as a comparison between that of the speaker and their own father. In deriving influence from writers such as Vievee Francis, Fatimah Asghar, and Alice Carriére, White Rabbit in a Snowstorm is meant to contribute to the broader discourse on trauma, particularly within the context of grief. In its ongoing discussion of closure and what it means to struggle with forgiveness, this collection is meant to be a testimony to what it means to witness the self, as both mind and body, through the forceful lens of loss.