Bivalve’s Love Song: Chimera 66 #5

(In Honor of, and with Simultaneous Apologies to, Valentine’s Day)

 

Oysters are the very definition of protean, beginning life as plankton and then becoming hard-shelled organisms able to change sex at least once per lifetime (photo by Flickr user Swamibu.)

 

From a temperate boudoir she comes,

fused with metamorphic rock.

You slaver to rasp slaty cleavage

with ravening tongue—

exploring textures.

It might be gneiss

to possess such a hybrid.

Highest bride,

whom I pried

from vinegar rest-bed,

for her “delicate, toothy texture”

and briny liqueur.

But sink this deeply into keratinized mind:

Being so caught up,

she has you shut in her

fickle flesh, adducted.

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Inspired by Grammar Ghoul’s Chimera 66 #5 writing prompt. The prompt was oyster, and it probably helps to read the links I’ve provided above and here, unless you have a really good memory from high school biology on bivalves and other sea life (or, obviously, if you’re a marine biologist). Hope you enjoyed this innuendo-, entendre-, and pun-filled (semi-) writing departure; you might still have time to get yours done. The deadline is today (Friday), and there are great writers there already! Where are you?

MORE SOURCES & INSPIRATIONS:

On the Eastern oyster

W.B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan”

And, finally, you might as well take a little trip back with gender-bending father Tiresias (who has “crossed the poles”); excuse the boring graphics–but the audio seems good except for clipping off the very end of the instrumental, which leads inexplicably into “Supper’s Ready” despite them being on different albums

 

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Flowering: A Poem

These are “Thai maroon” guavas, a type of red apple guava cultivar. Image in the public domain, by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Flowering

 by Leigh Ward-Smith

You want me for

your hot guava girl.

Succulently sweet,

            not too loud.

Squeezable, tease-able,

not too proud.

Juice, jelly, jam:

able to be quashed

under the press of your flesh.

Pulp: pink or cream,

and willing.

Prone to ardor, rot, parasites.

You’re convinced my fruits will mummify

without your potable vigor, sure

my feathered veins will wither.

Still, I propagate in any soil

I desire.

 

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This poem—which probably would have been titled “The Botany of Desire” if Michael Pollan hadn’t used it already, darn him!—was inspired by last week’s Grammar Ghoul (Chimera) 66-word challenge #4, whose deadline I missed a few days back. My advance apologies for the formatting in this; I’m not an html expert.

The prompt word was guava, as you might have guessed. For more on this fascinating fruit, you can try the University of Hawai’i Knowledge Master database on pests, crops, and much more, as I did. And also be sure to visit Grammar Ghoul Press, which has a garden-ful of weekly prompts, boys and ghouls.

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Haiku High Jinks: On Word-Building and LEGOs

Imagination power! Kid 2 thinks of the Bard (WS LEGO not seen above) as “Shakesbeard” and “Shakesbeer.” Which do you think he would like better?

 

Poet Ludens*

e.e.’s axiom:

which-y words flaying, zinging

out like darts in flesh

*Inspired by “what if a much of a which of a wind.” Text here at poem 75.

 

The play-bow. RIP, big guy.

Ode to An Absent Friend

The red slide of your

back. An arc, bowing willow,

bark tethered to moon.

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Imaginations

Three-headed robot.

’Sooth, “Shakesbeard” shall slay them all!

Words flare, sabrepoints.

 

The Art-Light Game

Light leapfrogs our wall.

Chiaroscuro hop-scotches,

Pollock play-splotches.

 

 

Written for the weekly (25 January 2015) Haiku Horizons, keyword “play.”