The Poetry Society

Anchovies are sea's calcification,

their bones crushed between our teeth,

their spines salting the slugs

of our tongues.

 

We slice flesh,

defibrillate pink tissue;

you're describing something out there

in the world and I'm hardly listening,

watching your lips flinch,

glossed by wine.

 

Such a dry sting: the tang of sloes

bitten from thorns, the tongue's winding

gear rusted, speech seized

in the sea-wrecked skull.

 

Past cutlery shoals, lawn tablecloths, cane chairs,

past our bottle of Pescador in its sleeve of ice

hillsides stiffen with the slow sucking

of olive trees and emerald pines.

 

Now a sea is withering in our heads,

its nacre polishing our mouths;

eye to eye across this café table

we swallow an ocean, a desert,

a desert, an ocean.