Dante Gabrielle Rossetti With His Head on the Virginal

Frank Stanford

for Father Wolfgang

That you are in danger
of a woman dressed in black
Who walks down the hall with a candelabra
to burn your suicide notes she read in Braille

You might be drifting
on a raft with a sleepy Negro
With dice in his boot
and dueling pistols under his magenta cumberbund

Salome gashes the sole of her drunken foot
on the ruby she danced from her belly
And looks up at you quite handsomely shivering in the mist
about to fence with that smudge on her mirror

You lay your head in the carousel
the lap of a friend's wild haired wife
And listen to the French horn putting out
the eyes of the sea anemones

There are mountains that float like ashes
sifted through a swatch of a Lemurian gown
And a child with her mouth full of saliva
making sounds coming from a coffin

Ginny Stanford