Today's poem is by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aubade with Cutlery and Crickets
In the dinner I cook for myself tonight,
you are an open drawer of cutlery.I've smelled the top notes of butter knives
at your shoulder, the tang hidden in the bladeof your walk. I need a serving spoon
to scoop dal into a cool ceramic, a forkwith tines long enough to pierce the skin
of the butternut squash roastedin honeyjuice. Even your hands
have become a kind of instrumentdelicate enough to slide crabmeat
out of the shell, sturdy enough to cracka breastbone if need be. Or maybe what
I smelled that morning still full of starlightand crickets when we said goodbye
was the clean coolness of a knife's ricasso,the flat rest for a thumb just before
the blade disappears into its handle.
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Copyright © 2018 Aimee Nezhukumatathil All rights reserved
from Oceanic
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
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