Sheila Black
Couple
They might be in a kitchen talking-the crumb of oil on the table she flicks away with the yellow sponge. The night when the night presses in like hands, like the stories of want, the stories of the grand- fathers who lost their way. A man hung by the neck under a bright yellow bulb. What you don't speak of- Tumors grow thusly like mushrooms, and the days so filled with pieces, like the receipts at the bottom of her purse. They might be in a kitchen talking-the grease on the saucepan, the sink clanking with forks, shifting through the water like dreamers in the heaviest of stainless steel dreams, eels gill-breathing through the pipes, translucent, so you can see even their strange blue hearts. "What surrounds us?" she wonders as she plungers her hands into the water, washes a cup, feeling the swoop of its hollow, and his voice which is saying nothing much. Some little ditty about how often he is tired and, on the porch, now that there is no day- light savings, when he sees the light he wonders a moment if he is like the moth, held by a thread he cannot see, which pulls him in as it pulls her, and she takes her hands out of the water and he takes her wet hands, just as they are, chill, a little soapy, uncertain where to put themselves.
* "The idea of eels in the sink came from a poem "The Sink Eels" by Lia Brooks in her forthcoming collection The North of May."