LACE AND PLACENTA Hannah Gellman We gather under a chuppah of avocado linoleum and cholerahued cherry lumber. It is a most gruesome forest, waxy trees wracked with the green flu of witnessing. It must be summer. The egg frying on the roof sounds like steamy rain and my mother wears the sizzling as a veil. At thirteen she stained an organza beach scarlet, thought a shark had strolled onto shore with confident new legs and tried her out for a snack. Lace and placenta make a honeycomb matrix, sting and squeeze my halfformed eyes so I cannot see my grandmother survey her daughter’s white rose midriff and snap her neck away with fervor and shame
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