LindaAnn Loschiavo,  Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems

Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti, Cemetery Superstar

Retaining fame 160 years
After I died unknown—artwork unsold,
My verses unpublished—has been bizarre.

Do stars need darkness to appreciate
Their glowing? Or wise men to point them out?

My temperamental husband, mad with guilt,
Laid me to rest with poems, his bound book.
This he missed —more than my companionship.

Where’s my work now? Just then there came a crash

Rude crowbars pried apart my long-sealed lid.
Men open-mouthed like choristers stared shocked.

Distraught, he’d sent them. Dig her up! He’ll learn
My flesh looked pale, my red hair’s grown more wild

Rossetti’s poems sweetened maggots’ meals.
Worm-eaten scraps had crowned my coffined head,
A spectral tapestry akin to my
Ophelia pose, a dead girl prettified,
Myself a teen when painted by Millais.

A painting’s fame forgets dead models—but
Art helps us dream back everything that’s lost.

Note:  Elizabeth Siddal [1829-1862] wed Dante Gabriel Rossetti in1849. In 1869, her husband’s agent Charles Augustus Howell encouraged Rossetti to put an exhumation in motion to retrieve the poems from her grave.

Further details

Judith Priestman, Prelude: A Banbury Tale

Chestnut

And when you died we laid out

all your clothes and found

a sprouting conker in the pocket

of a coat you’d borrowed from me,

then insisted was your own.

It looked as if a maggot

was inside the broken shell

and wriggling to get out and spoil

the silky gloss, the palm-cupped

curve, and who knows what.

We potted it and left it

on the bathroom window sill,

where nothing happened

for two weeks until a pale green,

white-green spear poked

through the soil. I didn’t like

to think what might be growing

in your grave by then, but by the time

they’d turfed and tamped it down

we found we had a sapling

on our hands. So when we’d done

the usual things, and finished off

the jam you’d made, but kept your

make-up, which we should

have thrown away – somehow

the smell of you – well, anyway

we moved the tree, damp-grown

and feeble as it was, and let it take

its chance down in the nettles

and the burdocks by the garden fence.

And now I have a giant chestnut there,

regardless of disease, and every year

it grows and fruits it takes me further

from your death and nearer to my own.

Its shadow moves across the lawn.

Further details

Alice Rothchild, Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician

See No Evil

1974

Brookdale Hospital

Brooklyn, New York

the woman sat up in bed, rocking, groaning

(fathers still not allowed in labor and delivery)

her chestnut hair matted

rubbing her swollen belly

hut-hut-hooing herself to full cervical dilation

bathed in the earthy scents of blood and amniotic fluid.

I was so excited to see a mother

doing natural childbirth

focused

breathing

in touch with the rhythms of labor

she had taken all the classes

she wanted to have her baby

HER WAY.

she was in control in a totally out-of-control moment.

(birthing being wildly primordial)

when she pushed with all her fierceness

I felt the magnificent power of her body

a primal life-giving force, womb-goddess-like

channeling the women

who labored and birthed before her.

I was awestruck.

as the baby’s head began to crown

my heart quickened.

but

the anesthesiologist snapped a mask over her face

Take the edge off, dear.

her obstetrician whipped out his forceps

cut a huge episiotomy opening her vagina

slipped the forceps over the baby’s head

and

dragged

    it

out

the

last

inch

of

the

birth canal.

robbing her.

the doc turned to me

eyes like darts over his mask.

he held his hands over his ears (you didn’t hear that)

his eyes (you didn’t see that)

his mouth (you will keep silent)

his crotch (you will not say what I did)

Got it?

Further details

J. R. Solonche,  Reading Takuboku Ishikawa

The Cashier

The cashier in the health food

store said she liked only Starbucks

coffee, so I asked her if she knew

what the Starbucks logo was. It’s a

mermaid or something, isn’t it? she

said. It’s something like a mermaid,

but it’s not a mermaid, I said. What

is it then? she said. It’s a…Oh, I’ve

forgotten what it’s called. I know it

has two fish tails instead of one and

lives in freshwater lakes instead of

the ocean and it’s a figure in Celtic

folklore, but I’m sorry, I can’t think

of what it’s called, I said. No worries.

I’ll look it up, she said, pointing to

her smart phone. I’ll tell everybody

that you told me. Thanks. That’s really

nice, I said. In the car, I remembered

it’s called a melusine. The next time

I’m in the health food store, I must

remember to tell the nice cashier how

much I like the way the youngsters

these days say, “No worries.”

Further details