Erika Meitner The Bar Code of Love
I brandished the wand & pushed scanner buttons with both thumbs, but nothing happened. I osterized & registered the symbols of our union, & it wasn’t a harbinger, but, my love, I couldn’t erase anything— not the cast-iron griddle, too heavy to lift; not the lovesick goblets bent at the waist as if they performed some important task other than holding household liquids. In the next-stop mattress outlet, you pressed every quilted pillowtop, then suggested we lie with our shoes still on to check filling & resilience, skin when we slid each slick blue surface converging—chrome flush that spread my chest like a walnut, as if we hadn’t already been living in sin for years, that bed of pictures (dirty? family?), a future tucked into your wallet, spilling folded laminates that accordion out like shrugged hands. What’s in the center of your palm besides one ring & a lifeline dug into your skin with a grapefruit spoon? My heart is a domed cakeplate,
150 ◆ Crab Orchard Review