ophelia, drowning

Style: Poem.

Statement: "ophelia, drowning" is a poem first inspired by the realization that the name Ophelia, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, sounds like "O, filia," meaning "O, daughter" in Latin. I found this particularly poignant because of the character's struggles with family and womanhood, and the rest of the poem is centered around femininity and its destruction.

ophelia, drowning

in her fountain of blood unfurled flowers petals of flint mouths of steel virginal lust. sacrosanct sin. spurting the water of life from her fingertips liquid greed falling from her eyelashes her frosted breasts float like ice in the ocean and her skin melts into consonance damned flesh.

o filia.

sanguinem funde—

feel it, Father. my chest rounded by an amalgam of guilts. the tissue calcified with eve’s condemned blood. Mother, sing me a psalm.