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The egg is skinned in water, born before
the body. Salt as a nut, bare with blood,
the shallows pink with ache: be arable,
bear me towards the water, let me have
you. I freeze you: cell-throb & wake me
inside the afterlife. On that day, death did
come as a white ram. Egg, we slit its throat.
Copyright © 2018 Nomi Stone. “On Freezing My Eggs” originally appeared in The Arkansas International. Used with permission of the author.
Nesting, the turtle seems to be crying even though she is simply secreting
her salt. Her dozens bud limbs inside amniotic pillows
as she leaves every egg in a cup of sand the size of her body,
shaped like a tilting teardrop — and both cryings
are mentioned by scientists. My niece Eve is startle-eyed when you feed her
avocado and when you feed her sweet potato. She lives mouth first:
Goats mewling
in the Muslim village.
Leafy footpath
into the bodiless acre
of graves. Pass.
Animals:
goats
chickens (a fury, a pack)
one pig (Salma)
Instructors measure our fervor.
Your machine must cover
the kill zone 100% Notate this fever Carry
the lure of the apple.
Where are you Salma? Little ache
of sky. Killing
Field inside, branches latched. Arbor, what is beyond
this wood?
Sunlit and dangerous, this country road.
We are follicle and meat and terror and
the machines leave their shells naked on the ground.
One soldier makes a museum in his basement.
Each mannequin in brass, incombustible coats:
I am walking between their blank faces,
their bullets traveling at the speed of sound. One soldier
who roasted a pig on his porch barbecuing until sinews were tender