In Boston our first bedded
year, he gave me
a found kitten, watched her
suck my nipples,
taught me to cook, straining
our first pot of spaghetti
with a tennis racket,
laughing. It was all we had.
We learned to play hooky
the first warm day in May,
strayed through used bookstores
until we found a battered cummings,
my eyes are fond of the east side
he read to me, my eyes fond of
the soft crook in his elbow, sunlight
saffron in his body hair.
The next May we went
to the East Side, saw Kosher
butchers dispatch chickens,
absorbed the winey dirge,
the sharp sounds of Essex Street,
shared a flat with kitchen tub,
pull-out city-sooted bed,
our cat Minou coated New York gray.
For ten years he made love
to me on Sundays, then drew
the covers his way until I spread
the bed with separate sheets.
Driving West one nervous spring
in our two cycle-engine Saab,
we shocked station attendants,
mixing oil with gasoline.
Camping in the car at night,
Minou cat walking in the dark,
he figured the miles to California.
I weighed crossing other ground.
In San Francisco life was sweet
a while, feasting on stuffed grape
leaves, Golden Gate mushrooms,
Murga Ka Korma at the Taj.
Always, in the afternoons,
I watched the fog roll in:
cool air over warm water
creating sea smoke.
Earthquake. Sudden trembling,
accumulated energy, quick release
along the faults. In January
rain fell for thirty days.
He slid into himself so deep
he couldn't wait for May.
i
We start a fire, burn
away the slash,
stoke it all afternoon.
I am on fire-watch,
hose in hand.
We talk in the drifting
ash of smoke-jumpers,
digging a bunker,
leaning into the flames.
He gives me his flannel
shirt, instructs me quietly
to wear nothing else:
on the green couch,
in full view of the pines.
ii
Cast into the cold, coarse
river, my line snags. I slide
toward it on the mossy rocks,
practice falling.
iii
I pee in the four corners
of the corral, curious,
catch my almond scent,
imagine I will be known
by the prowling cougar.
iv
Rebels from a small school,
anchovies teach my tongue:
their sex-taste,
their fingering length.
v
Hearing is not enough,
nor is the new way of seeing —
I have to try things on.
This morning I wear
the almost-perfect circle
of his breathing house.
vi
Past the delphiniums
I find a field mouse
chucked out of its entrails,
front paws steepled.
I think of a hole-dug, mousy farewell
but see its rear paws pushed out
like a runner's, fling it forward
into the quickening air,
over the back hill beyond
the scrubby bushes, the browning
grass, the punky branches
of remembered trees.
A virtual veterinarian, I
de-wormed my hard drive
today, wondering how
you insinuated your bytes
into my own warm disc,
thinking, if I were a worm,
I'd have five hearts side by side:
one to break, one for you
to infiltrate, three for spares.
I'd hate to be a lowly creature —
one thinks, for example, of maggots,
which, according to Merriam Webster,
are dipteran fly larvae, only worm-like,
a fact The Dictionary self-contradicts,
listing them with earthworms
and nematodes as having no spine.
Even the aromatic wormwood
has penetrated the vernacular
as something bitter and/or grievous.
But I admire their individualism,
as worms do not wiggle in herds,
and, while two might enjoy the same bit
of food, it would be for the taste
not the company, their prostomia
blocking unwanted bites.
Nor, in the case of a shared apple,
would either endure the vituperation
threaded through stories of Eve,
for each, with a clitellum,
can ejaculate and receive.
True, a worm has never been
the symbol for a Goddess or a God.
However, thousands of moist,
slimy species make their way
through the earth, some especially
suited for composting, notably
the Red Wiggler — which rapidly
reproduces, then backs out
from the cocoon of squirming
babes it leaves behind:
the one that gets off the hook.
MARY BAST is a life coach who writes poetry, memoir, and flash fiction. A finalist in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, her work in the past year has appeared in 100 Word Story, Bacopa Literary Review, Connotation Press, From the Depths, Six Minute Magazine, The Feathered Flounder, and The Found Poetry Review. When Mary's hands are not on computer keys they’re holding brush to canvas, inspired by North Central Florida’s woodlands, lakes, and prairies. She writes and paints barefoot and has no excuse for owning more than 30 pairs of shoes.
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2013
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