Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Allison Wyss writes about her new story collection, Splendid Anatomies, out now from Veliz Books.
If Splendid Anatomies were a head, it would be severed—
—but cleanly in the way of fairy tales. A graceful swing, a sharp slice. Three drops of blood but no more.
If Splendid Anatomies were an arm, it would also be severed, but not cleanly. The splintered end of bone would snap and the shreds of muscle and nerve would tangle. Fat and grease and other juices would leak from it and stain your clothes.
If Splendid Anatomies were boobs, they would be fake.
If Splendid Anatomies were lungs, they would breathe fire.
If Splendid Anatomies were thighs, they’d be searing, juicing, thick with muscle.
If Splendid Anatomies were a heart, it would beat from the walls of the house and maybe also from your chest.
If Splendid Anatomies were a toe, it would taste like marshmallow, just like your own child’s toe that you snacked on after her birth.
If Splendid Anatomies were a surgical tool, it would be the shiny one.
Splendid Anatomies were a vascular system, it would be a time bomb, ticking. If Splendid Anatomies were a nervous system, it would be nervous as fuck.
If Splendid Anatomies were a skeleton, the bones would collapse then click back together, again and again. If Splendid Anatomies were a spleen, it would do whatever the hell a spleen does, but less efficiently.
If Splendid Anatomies were a pregnancy, it would suck all the calcium from your bones and teeth. If Splendid Anatomies were an ultrasound, it would show a tiny foot that looked more like a foot print.
If Splendid Anatomies were a surgical operation, it wouldn’t remove anything, just slop down into your organs and stir them around. If Splendid Anatomies were a cyborg, you would only be able to tell because they looked like every other person in the room.
If Splendid Anatomies were a mole on your arm, it would be in the shape of Indiana and it would resist removal.
If Splendid Anatomies were a vein, it would turn into a worm and wriggle free.
If Splendid Anatomies were an elbow, it would be all elbows. If it were a knee, it would be just the one. If Splendid Anatomies were a tongue, the tongue would live in formaldehyde on a back shelf of the Mütter Museum. When kids roughhoused in the lobby, the tongue would shudder, but it would not speak.
If Splendid Anatomies were a Frankenstein monster, stitched together from your parts and everyone else’s, dead and alive, it would be just as it already is. You would be the seamstress. You would be the scientist. You would be the monster. You would be the one to scream.
Allison Wyss has a thing about body modification, dismemberment and fairy tales. Her stories have recently appeared in Water~Stone Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Moon City Review, Yemassee, Lunch Ticket, Jellyfish Review, and (less recently) elsewhere. Some of her ideas about the craft of fiction can be found in Reading Like a Writer, a monthly column she writes for the Loft Literary Center, where she also teaches classes. With Erin Kate Ryan, she is co-founder of the Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop. Follow Allison on Twitter at @AllisonWyss.
