On the occasion of learning that Baby Jessica—who enraptured the hearts of the nation when she fell down a Midwestern well in 1987—is now posing for adult magazines.
Like Odysseus,
she saw darkness that the
living are denied.
The bottom was a
permanent evening, treading
water with Charon.
When they hauled her up
they saved only her shadow;
left the rest to drown.
She was a revenant:
granted a second stained life
spent hiding from sun.
Later, her clothes off
in a magazine photo,
her skin is so pale.
(2004)
