(11) Pearled flesh: a softening, once taken on the tongue. I wanted to write about my mother’s body, her narrow hips and waist. She, who taught me to string the dried umbilical cuttings from each of my daughters’ births. But I am also writing of my body—I dearly wish to shuck its coverings stitched with scars. I don’t have any line across my belly to mark the place children might have been lifted out of our dark, into air. But I have other marks stretching down to the tops of my thighs, rippled cheesecloth wavefields. First, you know the shell mounts resistance. An anger spits grit around the oyster knife. Forbearance, they say about prodding. Something about a boon surely coming to those who open.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
