She Was Once

By Jeffrey Skinner / Issue 9

Poet commits suicide by papercut

Today Show chimp goes ape

Chains, anodized blue titanium

Dangle from the ascension

I shall be then as swiftly where I list

As I be now in my thoughts ghostly

Pinged by ancient girlfriend—

Another sex party scuffing the ether

Ophelia lives quietly in France, yes

The invisible claims a body

Scarless future, black satin riding coat

The past flowing from her ponytail

Our work should be ghostly not bodily

Hamlet’s looked; can’t find Shakespeare

JEFFREY SKINNER’s seventh full collection of poetry, Chance Divine, won last year’s Field Prize, and has just been published by Oberlin College Press. His I Offer This Container: New & Selected Poems, is also just out, from Salmon Poetry. He is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recent winner of a literature award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.