Marilyn, 1962

When you died, he worked feverishly,
methodically, like a paramedic

striving to resuscitate your fragile
spirit, to wring your heartbeat back.

There on the canvas he imagined
you alive, a single repeated photograph,

stuttered like invocations on a rosary.
Twenty-five beads of joy, twenty-five

of sorrow, every fifteen minutes a cycle
of prayer. On one side, your acrylic life

glows vivid; on the other, your captive
visage fades to black-and-white.

Framed by his urgent hand, you find
a silkscreened immortality.
.....