Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Fifteen Winter 2007 |
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Ophelia in Winter Regina Smith from the drown, she rises heavy bones soaked wings shorn she tumbles into hips onto ripples of hardwood a barren land: she is not for the touching. mostly she remembers the long purples though rosemary runs a close second. she is not allowed out in the rain never a long hot bath. she dreams of rooms where all windows face the river * she says scars give pain texture. her favorite word: submerge. she says when the lungs begin to fill bite down, blood, she says, use it any way you can. * almost six feet from the ground from the ground nonetheless she undulates firm wisp of smoke from the mouth from the mouth nonetheless she tells me secrets of water water like drums and the sky a distant flame down there she says blood never leaves the body she says the current kept her blood warm at first it was all blood warm skin. * I am the one who watches her sleep, making sure she remembers breath she sighs little songs of posies: nonny nonny, and I whisper a' down a' down; sometimes she screams for her father & I hold her scratched wrists tight. |