Perfect
Match
A wedge of burning juices, the onion-woman
wipes a blade across her thigh.
The bulb rocks on blue ceramic,
shivering in its paper wrap.
She turns a cut face to the countertop,
slices through each half-sphere.
Skin gives in and falls away.
The skillet smokes impatiently
and she mans the guillotine,
mechanical fingers raising
and dropping, rotating strips of opaque flesh.
She scrapes weeping squares into the pan.
Olive oil leaps at her, angry spatters
that can’t penetrate the forest of her arms.
Her eyes are dry as onionskin,
the meat transparent in its bed.
She raises the blade above her head,
bends to lap sharp liquid from the tile.
A single drop falls in her hair.
She twists to catch the next one
on her tongue, then draws the blade again,
a tapered smear along her thigh.
Smoke rises to the ceiling, she leans into the sizzle.
When the pan is engulfed she inhales
flames, flings the knife over the balcony
and follows it across the skyline,
a gritty magnesium flare
striking back.
Robin Listens to the Grass
The earth so wet it’s serving breakfast,
soggy lengths of pink ribbing. Severed,
each half pulls away from the other.
No effort to stitch themselves whole,
and why don’t they bleed?
More rain. The sky dissolves
on the calm tide, a comforter
under which crustaceans
wait for daylight. It crosses your mind—
you might hide here too—
but your animal-balloon limbs would betray you,
holding just enough breath to buoy you
into the rain-pocked blanket, causing someone trouble
you don’t believe you’re worth, soaking his sleeves
reaching in, unrolling you from the wool-scented bay,
a handful of earthworms
when he checks your pockets for a name.
Copyright © 2003 Jenifer Browne Lawrence