Vessels
Shouldn’t it ache, this slit
into the sweet
and salt mix of waters
comprising the mussel,
its labial meats
winged open: yellow-
fleshed, black and gray
around the tough
adductor? It hurts
to imagine it, regardless
of the harvester’s
denials, swiveling
his knife to make
the incision: one
dull cyst nicked
from the oyster’s
mantle—its thread of red
gland no bigger
than a seed
of trout roe—pressed
inside the tendered
flesh. Both hosts eased
open with a knife
(as if anything
could be said to be eased
with a knife):
so that one pearl
after another can be
harvested, polished,
added to others
until a single rope is strung
on silk. Linked
by what you think
is pain. Nothing
could be so roughly
handled and yet feel
so little, your pity
turned into part of this
production: you
with your small,
four-chambered heart,
shyness, hungers, envy: what
could be so precious
you’d cleave
another to keep it
close? Imagine
the weeks it takes to wind
nacre over the red
seed placed at the other
heart’s mantle.
The mussel
become what no one
wants to:
vessel, caisson, wounded
into making us
the thing we want
to call beautiful.
kinda bdsmy tho
