Cancer: dolphin love & Crab Pot by Len Kuntz
dolphin love
i lose you in winter melon soup under a broth of cloud cover ginger slices floating where your eyes once did no chance for extradition the weight of absence and imbalance prepping a slow fade to nowhere i find a hairline fracture in the china resembling lost nerve my spoon clanging like a warped church bell swinging lonesome as a weed in concrete streetlight shining down awaiting an answer or your reappearance which never comes even a shallow joy could get me through tonight suspend and arrest me the way you’d laugh like a dolphin in love you said i may be a cancer but i’m never getting it fuck that i’ll smoke when i want there’s too much life left too much you and me left but now the stock is cold and congealed a sump for suckers and non-believers while you are parsing the ether tubeless hospital gown rotting in the dirt i can’t eat think breathe correct for the record my bones are also dust heaped in your old ash tray waiting for the next hard breeze to blow
Crab Pot
I am floating in a tank, searching for proof I exist, submerged in a tank of water the color of dirty pillows, my claws taped shut, the others trying to box me out or rough me up without reason or explanation, all of us captive and confused, scratching at the glass because what else is there to do, because one by one we’re fished out with tongs until I’m the last one and through the murk I can see the outline of what looks like your face and your berry lipstick, kissing the glass instead of me, then pointing in my direction just before I’m airlifted out and buried where you always wanted me, in the ripe boil, in a cauldron of piping revenge.
Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of four books, most recently the story collection, THIS IS WHY I NEED YOU, out now from Ravenna Press. You can find more of his writing at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.
