Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Sixteen Spring 2008 |
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The Queen of Cups considers kitchens, as opposed to oceans Susan Slaviero I am the fortuneteller's sister. Together we eat salted oysters. Consider the latitude of sailors, gold rings. I fan my fins across her spirit board, pick random letters, spell out words I hardly know. I crack a turtle's egg with my claws. I ask her to define the following: flute, pendulum, mixing bowl. She tells me she still cannot swim, not in this landlocked body, but she carries the sea in her mouth. Our tongues freeze in marble slick storms, blues and greens, language boiled down to foam. On the other hand, a seascape can be bone-littered. Like a desert. Like a dinner table. It's not a church, you know. It's only sandcastles, seawater. Like pomegranate juice, only thinner. Here. I sit on a partially submerged rock. Or maybe I will bake waves into madeleines. It will help you remember, this Proustian confection. It's easy to drift in the passenger seat, tailfins resting on the dashboard. The sea is always greener in a muddy eye. Lock the door. Wear red. Take off your dress. Okay. I once read this story written in squid ink. I had the instinct to launder the pages, to breathe dirt into the narrative. I sleep in easy chairs sometimes, watch Portuguese movies with the sound turned off. Clearly, bread rises higher in an oiled bowl, in dry rooms. Like this. See? You know, I found a frog yesterday, trapped him in my webbed fingers. I didn't say kiss my mouth, eat lettuce from my fork. Instead, I fed him mushrooms with a baby spoon and set him outside on the patio, in the rain. |
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About Susan Slaviero |