For Emma Bovary


I used to think it was your tragedy
to choose an ugly means of suicide.
I've reconsidered since. That irony
is less important than it seems. You died

(though all unknowingly) defiantly;
you were magnificent in agony.
You took your beauty back into yourself,
and swallowed it like arsenic. What wealth

you left your pretty daughter, when you seized
yourself from their astonished hands, released
your body from their hungry gorging gaze --
your last act was to force their eyes away.

How odd to think that you'd be horrified
to see subversion in your suicide.