Issue #30.11 Three Poems by Meghan Sullivan
Babysitting at the Eleanor
When I ask if he’s ever been to the aquarium, Jake checks for understanding, like mommy’s belly?
2, 4, and 6, boys, so they make pizza crusts, penises, even the artificial Pothos leaves into swords and guns.
Luna Lovegood, Hedwig, the only character I recognize from their movie is Harry, which the boys all find funny.
Even 2 merps out Hawwy with a chortle. We watch before bedtime where I lazily read a book about sharks.
I skip as many pages as I can get away with (Jake, 4, notices the cheat—gestures back to the page about babies
in the momma shark’s “mermaid purse”). The boys wiggle their noses, fold their ears hot-dog-style
as we read that sharks’ skeletons are made of cartilage. Will I be such a slovenly librarian with my own
eggs? Running to the television and nightgown the moment those tendrils kiss the seabed. 6 is tired,
eyes rolling back after bragging about his adult teeth to which 4 replies grr! and shows his blue tongue.
Despite their mother’s warning of sensitive sleep, fear of the house-elf, Dobby, the boys melt into themselves.
When his breath steadies, I pad 2 with body pillows, a “taco” to keep him from falling out of their big, shared bed.
Digesting nicotine is one way to cope with the major unknowns—
I don’t understand the economy, for example, and the car? Totaled when the voice on apple play utters words like “deductible” or “limit” “number.” Allegedly, washer fluid is easy enough to fill
alone. The whole evening was eaten by googling Eileen Myles’ younger girlfriend. This is where God has decided the heat will be tonight. Leopidine, how is your inner world? Does your “person”
have insurance? When Danny venmos me for a muffin, I’m insulted! Our friend economy: dried hibiscus leaves, my wearing her Lisa Simpson ballcap a whole season, text chains where we jerk eachother’s
neuroses—“Do you think these grasshoppers fucking are a sign?” She assures me that variable ex is not likely to repatriate. We decide that as long as one of us knows how to propogate Mexican oregano,
we’ll be okay. The jurys still out on “the one” but I hope to share that conjugal peck with someone salt of the earth—someone who snaps pictures of the Bowser-looking spider.
Peach Peony
When you left, a vacuum opened in the kitchen. A pit of nutritional despair, Peach Peony tea leaves sweating over the teacup. I dreamed you called without reason: “How’s your inner world today?” The cart before the horse, always. To cats with human names like Kenneth, Earl, or Barbara, I smell your protections. Without tender, we are itchy in a wild brush & I am at the bank, rummaging lollipop bins for a “black hole” sucker. A tangible to the massive you in me collapsing. While I reject the myth of the solitary artist, who wants to spend the rest of their natural life stretching? The cat jumped this morning. In that cartoonish October fashion. His whole organ system pulling itself into a crescent moon. To the kittens who come and go from their person, ask them: the only way out? Through?
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Meghan Sullivan is a poet, teacher, Long Islander, and lover. She has her MFA in Poetry from the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans and teaches Rhetoric at Louisiana State University. Her poems and interviews have been published in several print and online publications, including The Gay and Lesbian Review, Bear Review, and Tilted House. You can find her on instagram @sunnysullypoetry.
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