Kathryn Pratt Russell is a poet who grew up as a military brat in the American South, England, and the Philippines. She teaches literary studies at Clayton State University near Atlanta. She has published poems, essays, and reviews in Gargoyle, Black Warrior Review, Disappointed Housewife, Studies in Romanticism, American Book Review, Studies in English Literature, and elsewhere.
Baudelaire's Watery Grave
Rig-tackle ho and tourists drift away,
The not-so-picturesque jetty falling
Back as broad-keeled the boat on gray
Tides balances far above the swelling,
Shrinking Portuguese men-of-war
That glint up at acquisitive children.
Women and men with pendant tits ignore
The ocean cache: their light stomachs turn in
The boat’s belly as the steersman slants
Toward the massive rock thrown off the coast.
What will you do, picaresque jaunters,
When on the metamorphic sides of that wasted
Island appears the form, the sloped shoulder,
Dappled skin, and eye without pupil?
Minute hairs and whiskers sting the boulders.
Dead things sleep under a seal.