First day I met Joanna, I’m thinking
the first hour, she asked
who’d ever tongued a sea anemone. Tongue a verb
at this professor’s beach house, tidepools full
and draining with the tide.
‘Cause they inject the neurotoxins in your
tongue, hold on like you’re a little piece of food.
Waves would surge, anemones would open, fine
pale tentacles come hither in the surf. . .
Your finger isn’t sensitive enough.
Her hair’s like mermaids, mouth rich with words:
Griffin, neurotoxins, skinny dip. Good idea,
sprawled at tidepool’s edge, ready, looking at her
eyes, her nose stud, sirens somewhere, hair
tangled above light vanishing off sea foam, lapsing
surf. We dipped our young and lovely heads to taste
tight fingers, thrill tiny almost-minds with our huge
catch, feel their greedy feelers, snatch
our tongues away. The waves grasping
at our hair, her hair wet now around her face. All day
we licked our lips with our new tongues at one another.
It hasn’t ended. Neurotoxins wake
me up sometimes, make me sleep with her
ex-boyfriends, make me quit calling mine.
This past November? Skinny-dipping, twice
down on the cape. Driving back, towels
blue as our new lips, I glimpsed
a tinge of scale. Not the iridescent
green I’d long expected. Gunmetal. Grey’s
the new black, I read in Sunday’s New York Times.
Shining matte about her hips, like oyster
shells, like buckshot. Pearls. Her breasts
full and mermaid shapely. Seatbelt
buckled, hair wet and loose and fine.
When I first ate raw oysters, I watched her
shun the fork, hold shells with perfect fingers.
No cocktail sauce for her. No Worcestershire.
I lied and said Oh yeah I eat them all the time.
I’d cite her ease with languages, her quick
and willing tongue. She used to be a SCUBA
dive instructor. Please note her hair
and her tattoos. Joanna Davidson is more
deserving than your other candidates;
the Daryl Hannahs, uncomplicated Ariels,
Flippers, Porgy, Porpoise. Her name’s anagram
the recipe of her conception: Join ova and sand.
She had me tonguing tentacles
first day I ever met her. Her hair,
those shining hips; you know who to choose.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.