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VESSELS

Shouldn’t it ache, this slit

into the sweet

and salt mix of waters

composing the mussel,

its labial meats

winged open: yellow-

fleshed, black and gray

around the tough

adductor? It hurts

to imagine it, regardless

of the harvester’s

denials, swiveling

his knife to make

the incision: one

dull cyst nicked

from the oyster’s

mantle—its thread of red

gland no bigger

than a seed

of trout roe—pressed

inside this mussel’s

tendered flesh.

Both hosts eased

open with a knife

(as if anything

could be said to be eased

with a knife):

so that one pearl

after another can be

harvested, polished,

added to others

until a single rope is strung

on silk. Linked

by what you think

is pain. Nothing

could be so roughly

handled and yet feel

so little, your pity

turned into part of this

production: you

with your small,

four-chambered heart,

shyness, hungers, envy: what

in you could be so precious

you would cleave

another to keep it

close? Imagine

the weeks it takes to wind

nacre over the red

seed placed at another

heart’s mantle. The mussel

become what no one

wants to:

vessel, caisson, wounded

into making us

the thing we want

to call beautiful.