Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Nineteen
Spring 2009
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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

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