The Drowned Woman
The Bride has many suitors even
Pulled from the water with kneecaps severed
The looming pier above the water
In the fog of morning, grey grass anchored
The bride has many suitors even
Stripped like paupers from intuition
The spectral sun and all its daughters
Comb the river for quills and linen
The bride has many suitors even
All with knives and skeletal visions
Read on the floorboards and in the kitchen
The map of days and indecisions
The bride has many suitors even
Along the banks of colorless waters
That do not study right or reason
But face tribunals in the empty after
The bride has many suitors even
Each one revealing the other’s messes
And the golden tresses of the flesh
That swam with sea glass and brilliant fishes
The bride has many suitors even
That do not dredge her from the depths
But witnessed there her fading breaths
Like rings of smoke in a frozen wind
The bride has many suitors even
All to others wed in banns now broken
The rising sun, the focus thinning
Illuminate the binate moon
This poem flows and rhymes really nicely, and it seems very professional, like it will get famous in the near future. It just feels, very well done. And I think, from my understanding, all the suitors drowned the woman in the river, then facing investigations and trials after the crime was committed. Those evil suitors. Really good poem though!
ReplyDeleteImpressive poem. You create a mood and stick to it. You create pictures in the mind and leave them there. I reread the poem looking for a favorite line and could not settle on one. Keep writing.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the line "The bride has many suitors" on the Painted Bride Art Center, but I don't know the story behind it. What is it referencing?
ReplyDeleteThe line is taken from the Painted Bride, which I take to be a reference to Duchamp, but the inspiration of the poem is a woman found floating in the Schuylkill near Bartram's Garden and the nature of her case (I believe her name is Rem'mie Fells).
DeleteThank you for sharing the source of your inspiration!
DeleteI really like this poem. It is descriptive, which paints a picture in my head. I love it
ReplyDeletePart of what makes this piece so eerie is the immediate contrast between the image of a bride that begins a stanza and makes you expect something happy or romantic, and the jarring appearance of something violent or bleak in the second line—“kneecaps severed,” “stripped,” “skeletal visions,” etc.
ReplyDeleteI’m also intrigued by the contrast of the colors that are scattered throughout the poem. Grayness seems like a motif—fog, gray grass, colorless water, smoke in a frozen wind—but occasionally there are surprising appearances of light—the “spectral sun,” “golden tresses” and “rising sun.” The “binate moon” at the end feels like it falls somewhere in the middle of those two things because it’s nighttime, after all, but also illuminating.