Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil by Mickey J. Corrigan

She fell in love
with driven designer
from an aristocratic family
from Rio de Janeiro

and four years later
she fell in love
with her lover’s city
with the smell of coffee
brewing in the cafés
the rooftop apartment
above Copacabana beach
girls in bright bathing suits
trim men walking dogs
and in the misty distance
the black granite cliffs
blooming orchids, waterfalls
in the forested mountains

she took two bites
of a cashew fruit
got cajun poisoning
face, hands swollen
her lover nursed her
and built her a studio
so she would not leave
for fifteen years.

She was a rare bird
Pulitzer Prize winner
and the poet laureate
living alone in D.C.
when the government purged
all homosexual employees
frightened, closeted
she drank
she dried out
multiple times
exorcizing her demons

until the demons within
destroyed what she’d built.