Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Nineteen Spring 2009 |
salmon run Janie Gleason When we touch down, shaking my hair out of my eyes and shaking your vocal cords back behind your adam's apple-- I consider myself full-grown now because I can sauté onions and paint my left-hand fingernails without help-- I stick a toothpick flag in the sand of the beach to declare our independence. You consider yourself full-grown because I kiss the stubble on your chin. The house is precarious, perched on the hill like the second layer of a cake my mother made, uneasily sliding off from the icing. It's windows are crab's eyes, waving gently in distress and the shingles are the scales of a pin-eyed salmon, hiding the pink flesh inside. You're not sure you'll like living in a house built of pink flesh but it was the best we could afford. I consider myself grown up because I worry about the plumbing and whether it will air-condition well. You consider the cinders in the backyard. I kiss your professional jawbone. |
About Janie Gleason |