Oysters

Listen closely to the text of my fingers,
their sedition and light. To what I am
trying to say, lodged between black lines
and difficult borders. It does not come
easily to me. Yesterday in the bar
we shucked oysters and rubbed the sides
of our thighs together under a sticky table,
the friction a lapidarian heat, a Tabasco
and lemon curl. I could not tell if it was
on purpose, but you did not stop.
Earlier you'd stared song-heavy looks,
asked me if I liked orchids.

Today my body does this instead, sloshes
across a crawling ambit of un-time
and non-space, aching for the meaning
of gesture in a stone and the lip of a shell.
I am as guilty as you. I was paralyzed
by want. For an instant of unimagined
history. For a boy whose name I can barely
pronounce and an old province long gone.
Avoir, bonsoir, merci—
Please, please, mercy.

Michelle Morgan lives in Auburn, Maine. Her poems, essays and artwork have appeared or are forthcoming numerous journals, including parva sed apta, Mannequin Envy, Arabesques Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster, 4SQ, JMWW, The Banyan Review, Salt River Review, The Aurorean, Off the Coast, Wolf Moon Journal, Plain Spoke, from east to west, Pemmican, Ruined Music, Wicked Alice, Literal Translations, Alimentum & New Verse News, and will be included in four forthcoming anthologies: Gooseriver Anthology 2007, Voyage: A Franco-American Heritage, Out of Line, and Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger American Poets. She is editor of the online literary & arts journal panamowa: a new lit order, and a graduate student in the American and New England Studies program at the University of Southern Maine.