Forester McClatchey
Poetry
Forester McClatchey is a poet and critic from Atlanta, Georgia. His work appears in 32 Poems, The Hopkins Review, and Five Points, and it has been nominated for Best New Poets. He teaches at Atlanta Classical Academy.
Ophelia
after John Everett Millais
Incapable of our own distress, we cache
our doubt in her floating marvel of a gown.
No death should ever be this beautiful.
Complicit in forget-me-nots, we drown
in the language of flowers, glory in the flash
of her cheek against dark wet. Her pallor pulls
us down to savage depths of white. Alive,
she’d be less wonderful. The model took
a four-month bath, fully clothed, and shook
with chills Millais ignored. Beauty thrives
in fevered minds. Ophelia infects
the facts we were so certain of; our heads
grow petal-rotten, and life seems incorrect.
We want our lush ghost. We want her dead.
“ ‘Ophelia’ is an ekphrastic poem about the famous painting by John Everett Millais. ”