Poem: Juliet Reads Herself

 

Juliet Reads Herself

 

blurs of crushed ants,

black bodies arranged

in rows, she’s dizzy

from the jumble

of their mandibles,

wants to leave

this puny cemetery,

 

but her eyes settle

on the corpses

as they resolve into slivers

of what she shouldn’t grasp

but does—

 

fancy sentences

that inject ache

then melt away,

like syringes of ice—

 

page after page

until the poison between the periods

no longer torments,

 

becomes cold water

she has swam—

the more she reads the closer she gets

to tragedy,

 

but it makes her young

to share the plight of a hero

or the hero’s lover—

 

it seems he loves her too,

that she is what’s written

for him to praise.

 

maybe the words

are what she is, and he, too,

 

a product of genius

that wrote this play then left,

 

leaving the characters

to love and die

forever.

 

 

 

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