ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Ellie Black is originally from Arkansas. She currently works as a poetry reader at the Adroit Journal and an Associate Editor for Sibling Rivalry Press. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from Best New Poets 2018, DIAGRAM, Split Lip Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, and elsewhere; she was recently a semifinalist for the Adroit Prizes in Poetry. In the fall, she’ll begin her MFA in poetry at the University of Mississippi.
Ariel Redux
“I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.”
— Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”
How many bodies settle
to the bottom of the sea? No more
of this jettison burial: I have died
the way I like and surfaced
once again. This time,
with tail. This time, with teeth
as well as scale—I inhale,
I reach my arms out into glittering
air above, to match below. The sheen
of wet becomes me, I admit, now
I cannot sink. I do not think either
that I will sing to any man, although
that too befits the laying-rock, the fairy tale
into which I have longed to dissolve, foam
bubbling out over sand and stone.
I could have come out flutter-winged, resigned
to breathless flight. Golden instead of green. But
the life as yet unlived no longer thrills.
Now when a crew of men looks out at dawn’s
bloody horizon to see my delicate hands,
my damp, red hair rising slowly
through the sea’s veneer, I bare my teeth,
silent, and regret only that a steed
cannot bear a body without feet.
In “Ariel Redux,” Sylvia Plath comes back to life as a mermaid. I once read that Plath loved Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” and this poem imagines that if, like Lady Lazarus, she could return, she’d have some control over the circumstances. Obviously, I’m no Plath, but I figured the best way to write this poem was to attempt to match her voice — her rhyme and meter, her sarcasm and vulnerability — as closely as I could. The poem belongs to a larger project focusing on famous women; the title refers to the Disney movie as well as Plath’s “Ariel.”
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
