midnight ptolemaeus
the salmon feed the trees, sun strikes the palm, my religion is in the mouth of a gar. i mourn my pretty.
i remember how flat my shoes got after all that running in the dirt. hanging out of the side of her truck with the pollen haze in my eyes. i remember misty echoes and faint egret wings. i remember mosquitos suckling at my ankles while i slurp the juice out of a crawfish head. i remember discovering if i screamed under water i wouldn’t disturb anyone. i remember what it was like to not feel my body anymore in the pool. blisters on my toe from too many flip turns. i live with a cramped foot. when i was born my lungs came up from the river. (skin fell into our orbit from the moon)—there is a pulsar in my molar. i am still human, this is just how girls like me are made. dredged up and hosed off, bones tucked behind our fat like trussed birds. we are airless things girls like me. cypress scented afterbirth, eyes in the back of our heads (spun around on the first birthday we realize kissing is sweeter than cake). there is no beer today. i was writing to solidify the walk. walking to breathe. a fish hook got caught in a tree. a heron nesting in a half-sunken boat. weed and jasmine. dry hands, baccarat and oud. i keep saying to myself that i remember when i was pretty but that’s only half-true. facets of hindsight and romance cut into a jade. when i am home i stare at the cracks in the ceiling. where is the locust? are its eyes on the back of its head or mine? the shadows in my room are the eyes of men. they shed their husks when tethys rears her ugly head. leave them under my bed while i peel my body away from the mirror. sulphur fires the tongue into a beautiful vase. leviathanic scourge weighing my feet to the earth, this is why i do not walk into the ptolemaeus. when i sleep i feel the mud of the blind river underneath my head. tendrils of water reach from behind and grab at my mouth, attempt to drown me. but there is no drowning whale fall. you wretched thing weren’t you pretty once? an obfuscated voice.
woman of pools you are your own fatty lagoon. you’ve never eaten well have you? fat carries flavor to the tongue.
