"Ophelia" published in The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review

Howdy, readers,

Check out my latest publication from July 2016.

http://thedoctortjeckleburgreview.com/works/poetry/poetry-ophelia/

This website will allow you contribute $2.00 to support my artistry.  Oh, yeah…  I'm telling you this because when you go to the link, you may be thinking, A) what's up with this?, or B) thank goodness I can now send Amanda two dollars.  :-)

This is a really cool journal.  Browse the website and enjoy it.  I send gratitude to Poetry Editor Natalie Homer for selecting my poem.  I had originally submitted it to a different journal for which she is a reader.  She liked my poem but was overruled by the editors.  Then she became the poetry editor at Eckleburg.  She remembered my poem, looked me up, and asked to publish it.  How wonderful!  Thank you.


Ophelia

Oh, how overdone
I am, swamp-logged,
blue-lipped. Poets
invoke my pickled virginity. 
All my life: “I know not
what to say, my lord.”
Now I know. Little girls
want to be me on Halloween,
wrapping themselves in weeds
and torn lingerie. I never
owned a white brocade
anything. But somehow
I am their adolescent
anthem, the early pure
death, flower-drowned,
bound in my own braids.
It’s embarrassing. Their reedy
legs remind me of herons
in the marsh where I was found,
my hymen grown soggy
and pecked out by a beak. 
Death consummates,
not consecrates, even me,
fifteen and spot-faced.
Bride of a bird. Bride
of mud. Spare me Mr.
Millais and his Pre-Raphaelite
pomposity. I never 
looked half so good dry.

Amanda Williamsen