Talin Tahajian: MUSSEL

Too many times, I have watched

flesh turn. Familiar things:

a daughter cracking mussels

against the pier, mollusks alive

and smacking. Yellow meat

crushed against bedrock.

A shade of white so slight, it is what

I imagine it's like to be open, inviting.

Someday, there will be no

such thing as boneless. At night

even salt glows with the light

of a body underwater.

This poem appeared in Devil's Lake which is published twice annually at the University of Wisconsin-Madison