Poem

Another Ophelia, Another Venus

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So she returns from the lank sea again her hair a vex of hermit crabs, her face dyed bone, the sea is sheathed in her — a fen of weeds & barnacles. Unsettled, grace- less at the outskirts of the bladderwrack she is slowly recovering the land — the air she mutilates on her tongue’s rack. Her language is reproach: the scrape of sand.

Of course, we close ourselves. We know to never listen. We have our laws, our homes to guard. Seeing our children, we force her down together. Why does she have to be so difficult? Why does she have to make us work so hard to keep her drowned: her voice beneath our salt?