VIsiting Poet I: Christina Liu

Dearest friend, thank you for giving me this poem to post. I'll read it often - for enjoyment, but mostly to learn. 

Ophelia in Stasis

I won't imagine how long she's

been there -- in silver river,

or a bathtub,

with her head bent back

against the hard, white marble,

or fingertips slipping along

the edge of flood.

I'll try to imagine her body's

movements now, swept along

with the currents and eddies,

her hair seaweed waving for sailors,

her own sailor, never to come again.

She must move now

as she did in life -- flowing

with whatever wind and words

whispered in her ear,

with scarcely an afterthought,

propelled, always, by another's

momentum, by the sword

and thrust of another's words.

She could be ageless,

but most likely,

she's a girl; her limbs

are slender and white.

I would see the pronounced clavicle,

her throat opening to night.

Over and over, her drowned form,

this silenced transgression,

has been linked to waterlilies,

crowned by flowers and reeds,

surrounded by small, golden fish.

Captured in words and frozen

by the master's eye.

But I dream her core sometimes

as a red fist

ready to awake.

Shaking off the clinging flowers,

ready to eat the world.