Contessa, ever-loving oyster shucker: my geography is lying
facedown on ice like a national treasure. Plucked from the Long
Island Sound, I’m the Jackie O of the mollusk kingdom.
I drip Americanness and wait patiently for us to lip-lock,
but lately, you have appeared a bit stabby, as if I am not
symmetrical—a collision of porcelain and gold leaf.
I have slouched around in this ridiculous corset soaking in
your brutal silence for weeks now. Absurdity, how she rode
in on horseradish from some foreign land and tore up the lawn,
how she lives in the guestroom, rent-free. I have lost the plot.
Still, I court you with champagne and Queen Anne’s Lace,
but somehow you distort me, view me through a fisheye lens
where I’m no longer in Lanthimos’ sea-light. Once I thought
this usurpation is so us, until you began calling me by the new
confidante’s name to rub the gout from your feet. I have fallen far.
O codswallop—I’m a pearl-clutch away from tantrums
and questionable survival tactics. To be honest, I hate her
shine and shtick, how I’ve been supplanted as disposable.
I hate how you bend and warp, how you’ve turned lapdog.
Darling girl, what makes you tick? If you do suddenly become sick,
seek me with your thick-tongue and dagger. Hinge me open
like an envelope. Sigh—how my complications multiply.
——————
Natalie Louise Tombasco is pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Florida State University and serves as the Interviews Editor of the Southeast Review. Her work can be found in Copper Nickel, Fairy Tale Review, Yalobusha Review, The Rumpus, Southern Indiana Review, Poet Lore, VIDA Review, among others. She has been nominated for the Best New Poets anthology for 2021 and has a chapbook forthcoming with CutBank in 2021 titled Collective Inventions.