Three
Poems by Natasha Sajé || Author's Links |
Bad News I demand you return the key to my Mustang because the thought of you driving to Arizona with your warm posterior glued to my lambswool pushed me over: give it back I say, meaning everything you'd fished from me. I'm a grown woman and I like change but I prefer not to erode--think rodere (to gnaw), think rodent (you). In my country frankness is raised to new heights. Even goats make the climb in bare feet while raptors circle overhead. I am happier in the company of raccoons who wash their hands before they eat. Imagine the fine hairs of a caterpillar. When they touch me I am stuck or is it struck, by the need to know whether you'd done what you did out of malevolence or ineptitude. Though it's too late now for distinctions between Elmer's and Flicka, between a sand burr and stockings stolen from a drawer. Give it back, I say as though speaking into a phone whose voice answers, press one for Spanish, press two for Dodo, the language of diplomacy. You speak the tongue of clams. As for me, I talk the way a tail invites pursuit: come here, you viridian-eyed rattler, come here. Song of the Cook I chant the pickled alewife, I wallow in surfeit plums simmering magenta culled & staining a backdrop for intrigue I excise hearts I let edges be edges-- where would I be without my thin blade? Somewhere a woman is washing her hands with wine on her breath, and elsewhere garlic heads tumble to a pink tiled floor My fingers are forks, my tongue is a rose herb-snip meat-whack root-chop I turn silver spoons into rabbit stew make quinces my thorny upholstery O custard apple pudding of applied love O cider wheedling its sugary tune how else could the side of beef walk with the sea urchin roe? How else could I seize what I see and ride my bird's eye maple broom into the night sky's steam? trouble she squeaks by pink slip, lazy maid spoiled hors d'oeuvres she's a swamp the body rusts, ovaries removed like pokeweed in the family's way and in it with the law she's a trifle with whipped cream & sulfuric custard but sludge ladies can bake bricklike cakes (we're good at breaking eggs) so let's let trouble into our hearts like a string of South Sea pearls black, luminous and raise her like a statue over all our small affairs |
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