Two Poems

Chalaziferous

I've attempted pumpkin bread four times, yet it's too light,
not spongey. Add another egg, says my friend,

to moisten. What will an egg do—like seaweed, ancient
rubbery flaps, a way to continue life? A vitelline membrane

to anchor. Could you drop a boiled egg into a stalled
car engine, then choke and vroom? My mother coddled

her eggs, no boiling, only the most delicate centrifuge
to produce a jiggling white—was this the height

of her cooking art? No, beef stew with prunes
more of a signature dish, pinch of sugar coaxing

the flavor of a ripe peach. In the kitchen, the egg was not
the real secret of her success, yet as a daughter

after her mother died, the eggshell broke—father and brother
continued their tasks while my mother double majored—

was she the egg of the family or did each contribute
to the outer and inner membrane? Later, when she hatched me,

the mammilary layer protected pores, and the chalaziferous
layer instructed me about innermost density and fiber.

My own eggs—I forbade them from becoming.
For Saturday breakfast, frying pan hot, the yokes scuttle,

orange verve of a jazz pianist, curved digits hammering
Alice Blue Eyes, the latebra, very core of the egg,

carrying the drip of butter to the plate.

 

Becoming a Canvas

—for Jennifer Martelli

An artist stood on a cliff, then the ocean surrendered. She barnacled herself into a square chamber, weaving bark into fur, leather words woven, an offering.

My mother tied thick blue yarn, my ponytails a voiceless target for bullies. Years later my abdomen wove itself around other organs. Only a surgeon could panorama.

Today I mimic the artist, stand at the Pacific, cliffs not a façade of an ancient building but how rock grows and tumbles. I push the embroidery needle in and out, my skin becoming a canvas while the waves sing, like the artist's long dark hair tied with string.

She has taught me about death (my mother's, a cliff eroding, a seagull's scream, nearby a cave, a bent cypress.) Down on the shore, scattered oystercatchers' orange beaks, inert bodies. Moccasin bugs shout to calm themselves, like a cat purring.