The man and woman moved in and found jellyfish in the bathtub.
The world was out of protective gloves and nets.
They stared at the claw foot full of jiggling blobs.

“We can’t dump them. That’s cruel.”
“Do they sting?”
The man thrust his hand in.
They tickled. They giggled. They sung.
Like the baby they couldn’t have.

The man and woman lived in a house where they bathed with jellyfish.
The creatures taught them songs, then died.
The world was out of graves.

The couple lugged the bathtub into the backyard
where they tried to burn the dead, but the jellyfish didn’t burn.

They popped into the air, glowing, humming – until the difference
between stars and jellyfish dissolved in the night’s cool belly.

 Quinn White

 
Quinn White is the author of My Moustache (Dancing Girl Press, 2013) and Orienteering (Origami Poems Project, 2013). Quinn’s poems appear in or are forthcoming from journals such as Weave Magazine, Sixth Finch, Word Riot, Gargoyle, and Rhino.

Artwork: Alexandra Khitrova, “aurora polaris”
Website: http://gaudibuendia.deviantart.com/

 

 

29 Apr This entry was published on April 29, 2015 at 12:02 am and is filed under 12 (April 2015), Archive, Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.