No

by: Anastasia Zamkinos

Sleep slicks off of my waking mind like water off of oiled feathers. I ignore the soreness until after I remember the dream in which 

    A pomegranate nesting in my palm cracked

    open and spilled out seeds.

    The gel around each hard grey heart melted

    into the lines of my palm

    and the black dots overwhelmed my hands

    like endless ellipses

    covering a page................................................................. 

    They spilled to the floor where

    a rattlesnake sang and

    slithered amongst them

    and the waves of tiny seeds

    tempted him to slip

    out of his own skin and

    wrap around my ankle and

    he squeezed and

    I did not

    could not

    move. 


    When it died, finally died,

    I was finally animated

    and I palmed a plastic bag

    and gathered the raw limp body of the snake up

    and threw the two out

    and the bag drifted, and I followed,

    to the toes of some distant body

    where the one baby sea turtle, the one

    that made it from the beach to the water

    without being snatched up by a gull,

    suffocated on the clear plastic 

    And I watched the body fall

    and land in obscurity; 

I brush my teeth with my elbows close to my bruised sides and think that somewhere there is comfort, there is a hand that can hold my hip and wake me from my nightmarewithout a piece of me coming off in its palm.

Editor's note:

Anastasia is editor-in-chief of Quarterlife the literary journal at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She is also one of the regulars at the Coffee Perk Wednesday evening poetry readings, which is where I met her. I'm thrilled that she agreed to share a bit of her poetry with us here at AlwaysSababa. I hope you enjoy her work as much as I do!