Outliving Sylvia Plath by Michelle Rhea

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Outliving Sylvia Plath

She forgot to live
long enough
to enjoy her madness.
~
This poem was published in The Quarterly, Gordon Lish, editor.
The painting which I photographed is by my friend Michael Helsem.
You can see Michael's blog here: http://graywyvern.blogspot.com/
Other paintings of his can be seen here:
http://www.dallasartsrevue.com/members/H/MichaelHelsem/Helsem.shtml

other sizes: small medium large original auto

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Poetry and photographs copyright Michelle Rhea

J. Taylor		25-Nov-2006 02:33
In Unearned familiarity, I’ll call her Syl for Short for Sylvia Plath Slightly flattened, abut the icy pane, she sits lovely in sweater, angora, fen gray, pressed there she isolates images of this pulsating, arterial boulevard Syl ever for the window’s ledge, window sill on which her panic bird perches and mullions vague dread, framing her paternity into perspectives; the defenestrations of genetics, the germanic craft of Herr Fenstermaker, the auto de fe of his unspoken word, her bonafide Pater Familia, dead father Otto, The glass slick as mucous to her nose nevertheless cold as the slush just there, slithered through by the automobiles circuiting six feet below her Her eel black mood could colorize the edges of the chiarascuro, unlatch the window, open it and dive. Breaking the brittle sub-surface, she imagines leaving a scarlet frayed patch surrounding her exit wound, weaving itself into ice. If there were only far enough to fall… she sighs What if her feverish, seasoned breath condensed, become visible; a second sense to remind her that this window is not an opening but a surface… seeing through its’ clarity she observes that the glazier’s transparancies paradoxically keep the real weather out; its barometric pressures, its measureable precipitants, the chilling effect of its dew point. No more than now, in the austere luxuriance of a warm view onto this wintering thoroughfare, traffic need be a parable in which the narrator is subject to the seasons, where we are mostly water and ones propensity to identify with ice, its crystaline perfection, is fatal Thank you ever so much for sharing your fusion of word and image. J

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