ISSUE 12

Sarah Elkins

​

​

​

​​

​

Crossing

 

The possum,

o-less in its lowly state,

no vanity in its topaz eyes

adorned now with flies,

dead here in the hairpin turn

of the road—albeit a hairpin

opened like a gator’s mouth—

has finished its good work.

 

If the gator were a dead one

hiding in the blind bluff of a road

and not a hairpin which is not

a hairpin but a turn in the road

with a possum on its shoulder,

 

the gator’s eighty-some teeth would become

eighty-some talismans in the hands of men

whose voices, resonant with pride,

would story the teeth

back into ferocity

to borrow as their own.

 

But the possum, its belly full

on the black grain of some five

thousand ticks, smiles gruesomely,

its fifty teeth held for now

 to a fine jawbone. No one

is taking any jewels

from this gentle mouth.

​​​​​

​

​​

​

​

​

Brain Food​​​​​​

​

I don’t mind

how the spine

of the sardine

pulverizes

between

my tongue

and the roof

of my mouth.

When the thread

of intestine

slides into

the gap

of my teeth,

I don’t think

of the plankton

still encased

there, or the

inevitability

of the anus.

I don’t wonder

about gender

as I swallow

gonad or ovary.

I lay each body

on a cracker.

Every thought

is an oily

electric fish

leaping

synapse

to synapse.

​

​

​​​