St. Eulalia

     by Laura Elizabeth Woollett
     art: John Waterhouse’s “St. Eulalia.” 1885. Oil on canvas. Tate, London, England.

Eulalia,

your bitter heart bleeds reckless

your bitter tongue

blackened in the slush

where angel-hair strews russet-dark

You were but a snow-bleached sass

You were but a pale infanta

black-eyed Spanish fly

clutching a chest of rosebuds

Did you hear the holy dove, canting across the skyline?

Did you see the white smoke-clouds

& rods of blackest pitch? (screaming in my ears)

Tender hooks & misery

your disused body

your brown pubescent stench

drenching smocks & granite (cold-wet)

blenching the boys on the sidelines

their vomit in the sleet

Your broken chassis

kicked again, speared again

Do you love me? Will you kiss my lips? says Death

& Mérida hears forever

your bitter words through the brown streets

littered with saintsbones, speckled with doveshit

Your bitter dying lips

through which out-flutters a white pigeon.

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Laura Elizabeth Woollett is a poet and sometimes-painter from Melbourne, Australia. Her poetry has appeared online in Cliterature and Mascara, and in the print journal Rabbit. Some of her favorite artists include: William Blake, Egon Schiele, John William Waterhouse, and Aron Wiesenfeld.

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© 2011 Laura Elizabeth Woollett