Karolina Zapal: "Like a Pistachio"

Like a Pistachio
 
Consider something as fragile as a pistachio shell
At first, still locked to its moon-color
counterpart, it may hang loose, open to losing
its one green earring. Even if the pocket feels
secure, like a fly between seam and button
fingers can easily pry it open with one chipper 
pop! Much less violent and silly to peel an orange 
 
A smattering of halves imitates a broken heart
If we were giants, they could imitate units of wind
Cribs for ants, shelves for beetles, dog bowls for mice
Who are the mice’s dogs? Love, often disguised
as a pet, is its own meager sustenance 
We feed it, sleep with it, take it out to piss, yet it almost always dies 
before we do. When it gets sick, we put it down
 
Push pistachios down a hill and listen to their caroling
They sound like pebbles playing in a child’s hand 
or a gumball machine freeing colors. Eating
we are tongue-tied for once because we’re full 
not empty. But they can bang like gunshots, too many
kind words to a headache, or taste like dirt bombs
hair grease, and eyeballs too sore for midnight
 
Ears flicker, eyes flutter, ankles bend to catch the light
My Q-tip tongue licks the salt from paper boats
while Mother asks if I love him, and no
matter how hard I try, I cannot glue the shells back together
to repeat their function. They’ve been handled 
by toes or eyes, not an expert’s touch, not a sculpture
of the stars, one bright, hot thing on every block

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KAROLINA ZAPAL is an itinerant poet, essayist, translator, and author of two books: Notes for Mid-Birth (Inside the Castle, 2019) and Polalka (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Inverted Syntax, Tupelo Quarterly, The Seventh Wave, Mantis, Posit, and others. She has completed three artist residencies: Greywood Arts in Killeagh, Ireland; Brashnar Creative Project in Skopje, Macedonia; and Bridge Guard in Štúrovo, Slovakia. She works at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities.