no glass behind the line | Marina Greenfeld

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2 mins read

today i look the half-pig
in its eyes entering
the cooler         it stares      

from the icy lower shelf
& asks              what i am       
grateful for       fragile things

end up in pieces back here
& pieces           end up
inside us           i am open at

every point      all pore
all milky eye   all blood-
filled glove      i shuck

brine straight into ex-
posed veins     salt bodies
absorb bodies    i break

a hinge             find tiny & red 
& stunned with cold
crabs                alive inside

the oyster        alive inside
itself    i know because it 
was closed       before  

i cracked it      wearing their bones
on the outside they are easy
to break           we are all exposed

here     parts of everyone
end up              in the disposal
it takes years to collect us

back from the drain  

       


Marina Greenfeld is a poet from Southwest Florida and Central North Carolina. Her work has been published in Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Cream City Review, and others. She holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi and works in scholarly publishing in New York.