Amy Small-McKinney 

Saying It, At The Art Gallery

  —After Eileen Goodman, Tumbling Clementines

A shadow, across orange clementines tumbling out of their bowl
asks the right question. One clementine, left behind, swears: I have nothing to say.

But where is she, the artist?
The pine crate slightly left of the light, she might be
the shadow lifted on elbows or the mouth, magenta & opened.

~
Later, look at the black locust, how it turrets behind a milky shade
that limits light and dark,
& the tree is separate from & we are separate from.

Except   I want to tell you how my husband refused to kill a red ant
because an ant’s antennae are bent like arms at the elbows, because it might have family,
he really did say, then ferried it out on his gigantic finger.

~
& how within limits of light & dark
I am still mother, sister, lover.
Do you think it ends? 
Vagina, breasts, the body as porringer, a bleeding cup?

~
Know this: The words are not leaving or left or if.
The words are: I will look for him,
his scent of magenta, the red of his ant.

~
Fact: Clementines are seedless if grown in isolation.

~
My words are seeds.
If    when   leaves   no   apart from the other.
My mouth, red & hunted.
I have said it:
When he dies. When.

_____

Previously published by The Indianapolis Review, Winter 2019/

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