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“(for don’t we all crave beauty and contamination)” ~ Priscilla Sneff
For CB: friend, fellow writer, dream interpreter extraordinaire
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I fissured the shells open,
exposing a magic act—
gushing moons, buttery discs
from pastel Styrofoam
ruptured
one at a time. From one ivory encasing
a ribbon of four yolks flowed, full-sized—
three of the yolks bright black,
inky eclipses. I did not marvel at this
multiplication,
this bounty from one enclosure. My worry:
to whirl together what was given
or pitch them and begin again?
I did not wear an apron, I was all hands
razzmatazzing runny fluid into a crock.
The black yolks suspended orbs,
beautiful dark buoyancy in the glass chamber.
Were these ova the obvious—physical fertility
for a woman without children? Creativity?
Transmutation from hunger?
I’d made a scrambled
sandwich hours before turning in.
In this vision, questioning myself on
what to do: I kept cracking them open,
the kitchen counter slick with sunny morning.
To whisk or to toss not the question at all;
I did nothing but the one trick
I knew. Rift and spill, rift and spill.
Waking to continue on paper.
Melanie Faith holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, NC. Her writing has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. She is a writing tutor at a college preparatory high school in rural Pennsylvania and an online creative writing instructor. Her WWII-themed poetry chapbook, Catching the Send-off Train, was published by Wordrunner eChapbooks as their summer 2013 selection. Her poems, essays, and fiction have been published in the past year at Vermillion Literary Project, Linden Avenue, Aldrich Press, The New Writer, Foliate Oak, Origami Poems Project, Star 82 Review, and Words Dance. She’s written two children’s picture books in 2013.