Start with your own body, the small bones of the hands moving toward the inlets of the fingers. Wanting it too much invites haste. You must love what is raw and hungered for. Think of the crab cake as the ending, as you till away at the meat, digging for errant shells and jagged edges. Always, it’s a matter of guesswork but you hold it together by the simplest of ingredients, for this is how the body learns to be generous, to forgive the flaws inherited and enjoy what lies ahead. Yet you never quite know when it happens, the moment when the lumps transcend egg and breadcrumbs, the quiver of oil in a hot pan, to become unworldly: the manifold of pleasure with the sweet ache of crab still bright on your tongue.
From Underlife (CavanKerry Press, 2009). Copyright © 2009 by January Gill O’Neil. Used with the permission of the author.
It wasn’t long before I rose
into the silk of my night-robes
and swilled the stars
and the beetles
back into sweetness—even my fingernails
carry my likeness, and I smudge
the marrow of myself
into light. I whisper street-
car, ardor, midnight
into the ears of the soldier
so he will forget everything
but the eyes of the night nurse
whose hair shines beneath
the prow of her white cap.
In the end, it is me
he shipwrecks. O arrow.
My arms knot as I pluck
the lone string tauter.
O crossbow. I kneel. He oozes,
and the grasses and red wasp
knock him back from my sight.
The night braids my hair.
I do not dream. I do not glow.
Copyright © 2015 by Tarfia Faizullah. Used with permission of the author.