Throngs crowd around
Warhol’s Campbell Soup
canvas. Images of Elvis,
Marilyn, a young Brando,
and Jackie Kennedy smiling
in her pill box hat moments before
the assassination. We see her
in that Channel suit, blood
spattered on pink wool. On
Air Force One, she stands
next to LBJ as he is sworn in,
wearing her husband’s brain
matter. Too young to know
the import, I store her chiseled,
features in memory, not unlike
the face of my own mother’s.
Pricilla Orr is the author of Jugglers & Tides and Losing the Horizon from Hannacroix Creek Books. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a residency from Yaddo. Twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Orr’s poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Worcester Review, Tiferet, and other journals. She is a poet for the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program and is the founding Director of the Betty June Silconas Poetry Center. She is also the founding editor of The Stillwater Review. A Professor of English at Sussex County Community College, she teaches literature and writing. Orr lives with Crosby, her Norwich terrier, in Hamburg, NJ.
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