The Expert
I eat salt when I am thirsty. Until my nose runs salt and then I cry. Until my lips go numb and then I drink a grain of something which dehydrates straight from the heart, the lung, an array of bluish organs.
I know thirst very well because I once belonged to that organization. It was a long time ago — I was in college and it was part-time, mostly mornings. Thirst loved me and recently, in fact, sent me a $250 check out of nowhere. Just for completing the census. Just for existing in a time of great pain. It's difficult to accept such a generous gift, but thirst is an affluent and guilty employer.
Thirst looks like a pool, an indoor swimming pool you install in the bathroom, a pool with a strong current. A lap-swimmer's pool for city dwellers. Thirst comes in the back of The New York Times Magazine.
In a crowd of women poets, eating, as often not eating, I am lonely. I eat from the bottom of the mines up, as if I can devour my way out, as if my throat is an open shaft, as if the white does not burn, as if the language has that fine sting, and I am working, a salaried Girl Friday to the salt.
I eat salt when I am thirsty. Until my nose runs salt and then I cry. Until my lips go numb and then I drink a grain of something which dehydrates straight from the heart, the lung, an array of bluish organs.
I know thirst very well because I once belonged to that organization. It was a long time ago — I was in college and it was part-time, mostly mornings. Thirst loved me and recently, in fact, sent me a $250 check out of nowhere. Just for completing the census. Just for existing in a time of great pain. It's difficult to accept such a generous gift, but thirst is an affluent and guilty employer.
Thirst looks like a pool, an indoor swimming pool you install in the bathroom, a pool with a strong current. A lap-swimmer's pool for city dwellers. Thirst comes in the back of The New York Times Magazine.
In a crowd of women poets, eating, as often not eating, I am lonely. I eat from the bottom of the mines up, as if I can devour my way out, as if my throat is an open shaft, as if the white does not burn, as if the language has that fine sting, and I am working, a salaried Girl Friday to the salt.
"The Expert" appears in Arielle Greenberg's first collection, Given (Wave Books, 2002). You can learn more about Greenberg and her work here on her website.
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