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.