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TALES OF AN ORANGEPEELER

an archive of pleasures, wounds, sublimations
& other curiosities :: profile


09.21.07, friday morning


Her eyes were startling after four years. I embraced Fernanda tentatively, then tighter. Her eyes were grave, deep, darker--four years in New York; four years of chasing cheese (and tired of it); four years later, her boyfriend gets stuck in Venezeula, without State permission to return to their apartment, bed, and life together.

Then she grinned, then she spilled a bit of wine, then she shared a cigarette with me in a steamy greenhouse.

Within that blue-black night, Fer's voice reached me, boundless and buoyant and bountiful.

. . .

HEART
MARGARET ATWOOD

Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.
The hard part is getting the damn thing out.
A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,
your spine a wrist,
and then, hup! it's in your mouth.
You turn yourself partially inside out
like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.
There's a broken plop, the racket
of fish guts into a pail,
and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot
of the still-alive past, whole on a plate.

It gets passed around. It's slippery. It gets dropped,
but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.
Too sour, says another, making a face.
Each one is an instant gourmet,
and you stand listening to all this
in the corner like a newly hired waiter,
your diffident, skilful hand on the wound hidden
deep inside your shirt and chest,
shyly, heartless.






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