Two Poems

Abstract

89 REBECCA MACIJESKI Two Poems  Yeti Eats a Brunch of Soft-Shelled Crab His sandwich has legs. From between the sourdough bread and pesto emerges a tiny orange claw: the gaping jaw of some unfortunate tyrannosaur served alongside a La Brea of homefries. He dines in the front window, napkin in his lap, watching townspeople pass. Something about the sun, the way its light hits the small knuckles in his sandwich. Something about the weave of the tablecloth. Something about how the waitress pours cool water into his glass slowly, from the side, keeping the ice from leaping out, makes him remember his mother. One Sunday, when he was young, he helped her candy violets. He walked with her out into the yard where they gathered tiny blossoms into the large pockets of their aprons. At first she’d fill a whole tray with the white and purple stars. Then she’d lift him up and let him dip the flowers into the wet sugar, let him place them face up to dry in delicate rows, let him lick the sweetness that ran onto his fingers and down his arm. Something about the stillness, the lemon walls, and the restaurant’s quiet eating. Something about the way Yeti crunches, bits of shell and bread clattering onto his plate. The brightly colored debris. 90 Yeti Gazing On a clear night he’ll be up on his rooftop tending his roses, waiting for the clouds to disperse and reveal his favorite manifesto: the night sky. Through his telescope he’ll peer into a matrix of stars and record coordinates of the deep past. He wonders whether Schrödinger and Heisenberg are out there calculating uncertainties. He wonders, through his eyepiece, how far the Voyager compilation has travelled carrying Mozart and human laughter toward the universe’s grandly imagined edge. As crickets, unseen from his lawn, drone the tiny violins of their legs, he’ll step back from his lens to lift a single bloom to his nose and breathe its pink galaxy. Morning rain water spills from the soft cups of the petals, splashing him with cool, clear matter, a sense of opening. His fur matted where the sky touched him. ...