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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3774 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Listening to the Skin Laurel K. Dodge "There is nothing in your body that lies." --Anne Sexton I snap off the ends, toss the beans into the pan; they sink to the bottom like decapitated limbs. Your book is splayed on the table, spine broken so it will lay open, a woman's mouth gaped, whispering sins, faking orgasms. Every poem, a sucide note; every page a recipe for love, death or infidelity—yes, Anne, I know: they are one in the same. I am not your daughter, the girl you curled into, your need snailing into her shell, your fingers tentative as antennae probing the secret air of her garden, tasting her texture, tender and velvety as a bean, boiled and buttered. I put the pan on the burner, watch the water come to a reluctant boil as if it knows I am a voyeur. Then I turn down the heat, cover the beans with a lid and let them simmer in privacy. We divvy them between us, salted and buttered, a meager meal wolfed down in silence. We do not speak of what it means to eat, to be eaten by what we love best. I cannot escape this mirror. I’m sick of the mattress’s betrayal; I confess to the blade that I am tired, let the lips on my wrists wail. You lead me down to the edge, my fingers stringless beans crushed in my mother’s hand. You row the boat out to the middle and feed the oars to the water; we wait for the waves to drag us under. |
