Oregon — winter
With my back to the shoreline, I tiptoed around what seemed to me
a biological rarity: just mounds of it, ouroboroses tackle piled
over each other. I thought a giant’s heart broke
and he, incapable of telling organ from beating nucleus,
ripped out his intestines instead. Waited for the brackish
perfume to leak from it, nothing but salt air seeping
out of the gumminess, Greek for mermaid’s bladder,
the plates of spaghetti smeared with butter and fake
cheese we ate in August not yet making money
and performing penny-tight penance to pay
for our apartment, then—and still—a luxury
item. I guess I’m wondering if we will ever hold jobs
that don’t kill us or make a mockery of our night lives
or if we like that giant now floating in the Pacific,
all dead weight and jellyfish stung,
will self-dissect and leave our extractions
on some beach for rich tourists to nudge
with their feet and see if there’s a jump scare.
Evana Bodiker is a poet living in Boston. Her chapbook Ephemera, winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Prize, was published in 2018 (Texas Review Press). Evana’s poems appear or are forthcoming from Sonora Review, The Oyez Review, Noble / Gas Qtrly, LEVELER, and elsewhere. In the fall, she will begin her MFA candidacy at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.