Two by Maureen Kingston


The Sinkhole

Neglect has brought us here.
Neglect
the underground culprit
eroding us.

I stare into my coffee,
into its blown pupil.

Our sinkhole grew
by slow collapse,
by swallowing
more and more.
I hardly noticed the rising
dew point.
The spongy joists.
The strawworm nest.

Did you?

What simple frogs
we used to be–
breathing through our skins,
breathing each other in.
And the moon. How easily it
lustered our nuptial pond.

Now it only indicts,
spotlights our cracked
glass house
and the two of us
dissolving–
two dry drunks
on the rocks
hissing in the glade.






Mother of Invention

Today’s the day I’m supposed to snip
the belly of my cat’s cradle,
read my fortune in its stringy entrails.
But there are no sharp scissors
anywhere in the house, nor scalpel
to transect its tiny navel knot.

Why do I wait until every last blade is dulled
before I’ll mount the sharpener,
part its cowry lips, let the sparks fly?

I’m afraid, that’s why.

It’s taken months of massage
to coax my tensor muscle into relaxing,
into releasing my soft palate from the clutches
of its tight censor. That know-it-all
piano wire would love to cut me out,
silence me for good.

Fuck it. I’ll use my teeth.





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