ODE
pours over the banks
and over the ferns
this is not Gudique.
Gudique is the chastening,
the river forgetting
Gudique is the river.
Isolde, I can see you now.
Laughing in your villa in Wisconsin.
Iambic pentameter
suicide notes spread out
on the bed between your legs.
Gesturing with your breasts !
Looking so nice.
Once on the Great
Ca ttle Drive West,
we messed and wet
the desert like a bed.
Now schoolboys learn
our miracles by heart : the
boiling of the waters
and the Feast of the Hysteri cal
Pregnancy. They call you my
"dark lady" and I say
Yes her
black shawl was the night
sky, sh e
James McMichael
might have been an abbess, th e way she
kept the body dark .
..
And still I keep the pic tures
