by Cee Pugsley
I’m first child of a hydrothermal vent,
my love, deep and wet as the Mariana Trench
It’s told such wild depths
supplant the senses,
but I understand cold, when,
over my olfactory cilia, I make the water move,
taste sulfur, and cobalt, and you.
I luminesce to bait you.
But I’m late, and you press, slip, lift
tumid from my grip,
and the frigid void is salt.
Nothing but salt,
buoying me to the surface.
When it breaks, I am in a stock pot at Le Bernardin
being stirred by Eric Ripert himself.
And my love is Dover sole
with soy-lime miso emulsion:
salt and fat and rich umami.
Did you know how fond he was of Bourdain?
Did you know he found the body?
As he stirs, he nurtures me,
till I’m curled, red and fetal as a spot prawn,
pale shins, limp chest hot against the rounded steel.
Our males are small and have no mouths.
I think he feels that, knows it, somehow.
Out back, he bangs me into a
dumpster with three metallic blows.
I’ve grown skin now, to know
the algid slime of cut greens,
the jagged edges of opened cans.
The fissure that spread her slit for me will fruit multitudes.
You cannot stitch your husband sutures on la Mer.
She doesn’t care—how tight she is—
The dumpster flaps its plastic mouth
behind me, to bid farewell.
I tread my first bare, timid steps
in this midtown alley, loose breasts,
useless esca swaying in the heady swell:
the August sewage of this city
making its slow way to the sea.
Cee Pugsley is a writer and transcriptionist from Baltimore, Maryland where they live with their partner and 2 children. They’re currently at work on their first novel.
Add your first comment to this post