Emily Vizzo

The Delicacy of Kidney Beans

Wild is the garnish my organs seek

            You know you undid my black bathing suit

On a blanket at the same courthouse where you played tag

            With a judge in the sunken gardens. You kissed a mapmaker

His hands filled with lemons. Bees can catch a disease

Which makes them seek the light, the mapmaker explains as I sweep

The front porch clean of their deep fried bodies.

I switch off the light. Parsley, endive, burden. Roast.

The mapmaker recites the names of islands familiar to me.

But I am thinking of breakfast still. Potatoes, crust.

I’m not ready for a man.

 

Paradise comes easily when your name is Mary.

I set a geranium at her plaster feet.

            The judge in his black robe swirls behind the Spanish

Revival. We tea.

 

Heaven could be a circus tent, the satin bulge

Of a mapmaker’s cock. Talent has geography,

Arcades. Pray for me,

 

            Route the biology of your fingers

            Skyward. Jilt of the fit light.

 

I dare to say I am happy.

It feels ceramic to say so.

A bee is not a moth.

My brain instants.

The judge but a calamity.

Engineer of my organs, my fantastic deliverer,

Eat me alive!

 

 


“The Delicacy of Kidney Beans” is from Giantess (YesYes Books, 2018).