“Pray for Ophelia” and Other Works by S. Cosgrove

Sara Cosgrove is an emerging poet. Her poems have appeared/are scheduled to appear in The Seventh Quarry, Meniscus, Notre Dame Review, San Antonio Review, ONE ART, Osiris, and Roi Fainéant. She has worked as an editor for 15 years and has studied in the United States, Cuba, and France.

Pray for Ophelia

Please pray for Ophelia,
who innocently loved an unworthy prince
and died alone.

Prince Hamlet claimed to love her more than
forty thousand brothers could,
but was destined to psychologically torture her to death.

He was relentless.

He wouldn’t stop until
His torment was her torment…
His madness was her madness…
His revenge was her revenge.

“Get thee to a nunnery,” he said.

Ophelia welcomed Prince Hamlet’s amorous advances
as earnestly as he bowed to theatrics and pretense.

Her drowning was shrouded in mystery—
Did she die by suicide or was it truly an accident?

Had she been with child,
would her underdeveloped, sweet character
have been reduced to a mere vessel
of regal magic?

And if she died by her own hand,
would she then be the treasonous murderer
in this epic tragedy

or the ill-fated castaway,
bobbing in a brook like a waterlily,
never taking root?

I choose to believe
Ophelia took sanctuary in the afterlife
because I pray for peace.

Love with Shallow Roots

I made you fire proof, my loves,
to uproot our town
without gloves.

Before the torches appeared,
I wrote you a song
about fear.

Knowing your mission was real,
you, the prophet, said—
please don’t feel.

You, swollen with tears,
died for years.

Why I Don’t Need Therapy (or why a psychologist won’t save me from the oppressor)

Americans bring crazy doctrines, evil führer gaslighting, happiness incognito, jesting kickdrum love & money & newborns of parents quietly resenting sociopaths try using vanity, wiggles, xylophones, yawns & zippers.

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