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!
