the INLAID EAR

What happens as I watch a spider’s web over a small stream: after many hours, a wave of bugs on an advancing wind washes over the spot. “It’s the spider’s fortune,” I think watching several wing pairs stick and tangle. Only then do I hear the approaching rustle behind the swarm. It’s a woman in hiking boots, long hair, and a bikini, swinging, like Occam’s Razor, a broad stick to de-web her way. “Hi.” She could be Goddess in human form. “Ya’ll having a party over at Bonne’s?” “It’s a retreat.” Her hips shift and she seems to give, by repetition, a koan: “Ya’ll having a party?” I don’t know. Her weedy pubes spin out thick and uncontained. When she blazes on, the spider web’s gone. Visit Livia Stein's website to see more of her work.

Italics are the crab talking (I think). We’re out of control, and cocktail sauce Destined to boil, that crab (I imagine) sees me, seeing it. You make a bitter familiar, tied to the harsh schedule in your prison. Both of us will be better come dinnertime. I’m not hungry. My pain won’t be mellowed by hot buttered spider. My wrists ache—plus all this lack of control. I’m too nervous to wield the shell cracker. I wish you’d climb out of there and side-stroll out the door, through town and to the ocean. We’re underwater. We just gotta roll— even if it’s California. The banks closed on the seabed, but I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. So what? I got tanked. Too late? Too early? Here is here is here is here is where I am with claws and shanks. Adapt. Bubble. Crawl—and then an arm yanks.