Melissa Strilecki
CONCEIT
We must choose eccentric over sad. Take up taxidermy, walk
our creatures on a leash. Like Dumas, demand yellow paper
for our poems. Admit: I don’t want to choke but I want
your hands on my throat. Bake you pumpkin pie. Sing you
lullabies. Carve ruby canyons in your thighs.
Salt taunts from these red blossoms. Dare I? We all
first swim in brine, so if I wade deep into footnotes
of salinity tables, I’m trying to live through drought.
Obsessed with latitude—the last metaphor you’ll abide—
we sail Capricorn to Cancer, triangulating sun, Earth,
and us. You count each day’s blisters, lancing blebs
from my shoulders. Life etched my skin; the lines break
inelegant—I do not function as a poem. What babel binds
your song? I’ll translate, line by balmy line. Should you go blind
still burdened by verse, I’ll transcribe your litany
of tropical birds, the Latin names are often gorgeous.