The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Five Prose Poems on Rossetti, by Cassandra Atherton

5/24/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Proserpine, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) 1874

Proserpine 
​

There is freedom in Summer, in blue heaven Slurpees and al fresco dining. My lover throws the sheet from his body and the sun stripes his legs like bright stockings. Sometimes we open the window and the breeze is jasmine in the morning, burning citronella candles in the evening. One time he suggested we go to Bath in June to prolong our season; drink champagne with chilli mussels and look out over rooftops from an apartment with a turquoise door. But I promised to spend winter with someone else, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows, burrowing beneath the king­ size doona. When blossom starts to creep across branches, a book arrives in the mail with six pomegranate seeds pressed between the pages.

Picture
Regina Cordium, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) 1860
P.R.B. (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood)

I wish I had been painted by Millais. Maybe not as Ophelia in a tepid bath. Perhaps as Lady Macbeth. Or Titania. Or Portia. I used to make you sit on a little wooden stool and pretend you were painting me. Stroke after stroke rasping against the canvas. I would unravel my strawberry plaits and stare at you. Sherry eyes. Corsage at my neck. Picking up the small crumbs of wedding cake and passing them through my gold ring. Nine times. But you still didn’t get the hint. And so I am suspended in that moment. Forever bridesmaid. I can’t be Effie to your Ruskin. So blot out the canvas with grey. Euphemia’s hagiography turns on a wheel and a bear, but I can’t be your martyr. Writhing in my skin, I call out to Rossetti to paint me. I make you call me Guggums and cling to wild heartsease. We both know the laudanum comes later. So you paint me. Regina Cordium. Hooded lids. Heart shaped pendant. There are two still babies in the shadows. One within and one without. Broken hearted, I become your posthumous Beatrice. Dig me up Dante! Exhume me. Consume me. Shift the soil between us and gather me in your arms. Chase your journal of poems around my coffin with your fingertips as you hold me. Let me hear your mew of pleasure when you have it. At last. My copper hair fills the empty space. But the worm’s hole in your journal eats away at your heart.
Picture
Beata Beatrix, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) c. 1864–1870
​Beata Beatrix 

If you elegize me, do it slowly. Don’t write a pantoum one evening over a chicken curry. Or a villanelle on the train between suburban stations. Take your time, compose a prose poem longhand in a notebook with a fountain pen. Buy an inkwell and fill it with pink ink. Let it stain your writing fingers. Set aside a few nights each month to put in commas and take out adjectives. Picture me in every metonym and alliteration; imagine us inhabiting the spaces between words. When it’s finished, don’t publish it. Make a bonfire and watch the paper catch and burn—the letters taking off like hundreds of fireflies in the starless night.
Picture
The Blue Bower, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) 1865

The Blue Bower

At Hotel Granvia, a skinny Santa Claus in a blue fur suit rings a bell to announce the roast beef is being carved. You take up a naked plate while I wait for the cheesy happiness at the bottom of a seafood doria. I’m post-­martini and you’ve had three glasses of wine. Salarymen fuelled by bottomless tokkuri of saké are cheering as the Christmas tree casts a pattern of turquoise light over the buffet. You nudge a silver orgel, from the Imperial Palace, across the table. When I open the lid, it plays Happy Birthday and blue Santa brings me a slice of strawberry shortcake on a heart­-shaped plate. I take the cherry blossom from inside the music box and one of its tiny petals comes to rest beside my dessert spoon; a pink dot like a full stop.

Picture
A Sea Spell, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) 1877

​A Sea Spell 

We share a triangular hotel room during stage three lockdown. Champagne bottles line the kitchen wall and every evening before bed I pull on your t­shirt and sneak down the corridor to put oyster shells and fish bones down the rubbish chute. I wedge the door open with my notebook. At night, we hook my computer to the television and watch old movies. You tell me I look like Glynis Johns in Miranda and I revel in crimpy hair and, at breakfast, sardines on toast. For ten days, the bed is our ocean. On the last morning, as we walk along the beach, I throw my half­-eaten Danish to a waiting seagull.

Cassandra Atherton

Cassandra Atherton is an Australian prose poet and leading scholar of prose poetry. Her prose poems are widely anthologized and have been translated into Korean, Japanese and Chinese. Cassandra’s most recent books of prose poetry are Leftovers (2020) and Fugitive Letters (2020).  She is currently working on a book of prose poetry on the atomic bomb with funding from the Australia Council. Cassandra co-wrote Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton, UP: 2020) and co-edited The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne UP: 2020) with Paul Hetherington. She is a commissioning editor for Westerly magazine and Professor of Writing and Literature in Melbourne, Australia.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    Join us on Facebook:
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead