Her sisters stream, brittle-winged
into the widemouth sea
but she hulks there
dark jewel on soft coral
while her body sets around her.
Sprawling inside a china fist
she is a nude, forever ascending
descending the spiral stair.
Shyly, she laps herself
with her secretive tongue.
Until she is impacted, a tooth
in a jaw of stone.
I put my monkey's paw in
to touch her sleek, dark shell
but she draws her mantle up.
I must unfist myself, release her
before the reef will let me go.
She squeezes her eggpaste
down the tube of my ear
and grubfish grow there
in my brain's flanged folds.
That is why I dream
of hunchbacks rippling fleshy skirts
in slow flamenco.
That is why, in the x-rays
I am smiling.
The woman in the mantle fringed with eyes
told me, when it comes
death will be the delicious sensation
of a wet mouth sucking
on its own smooth skull.
