(Ophelia)
Here’s barely a pulse.
Dull the eyes,
the dulling mind.
Hair falling across the canvas the quilt
makes, overlays every-which-
way, strewn cornsilk. And green the background
wrought from worn-out dreams of
creating something
incontestably
beautiful, to last. Failed that
though warm beneath to curl up
under. Sound of a voice (O O O)
sorrow’s non-
sense. Too close
to refuse
to hear. No comprehension but
the heart’s. No feeling but the skin’s.
Poor eyes unseeing this face I’m cupping.
CYNTHIA HOGUE’s poems are forthcoming in Field, in addition to recent poems in Prairie Schooner and Best American Poetry in 2016. Her ninth collection of poems, In June the Labyrinth, was published in 2017.
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