Drawing in chalk of Christina Rossetti by her
brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1877.

Christina Rossetti

"Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last."

               --Christina Rossetti, c. 1894

A dark Victorian room, a purple face.
Night fell. Christina Rossetti screamed.
She declared pussy-cats cavorted
on the black satin. She screamed
until the neighbors complained.

Hormones swarmed in her blood
like ivy in a Pre-Raphaelite painting;
visions of bearded men suffocated,
she denied herself the manly scent; and now
bitter memories of delirious fruit
(citrons, grapes, plums, dates,
pomegranates, figs, and so much more),
memories of goblin men, the consequences
of renunciation spewing out now in ghastly
female cries of final and bitter regret.

        --Clifton Snider
        (from The Alchemy of Opposites,
        Chiron Review Press, © 2000,
        all rights reserved)