I hold the fossil
of a mollusk called ammonite,
sliced in half and polished.
It’s what my own curled innards
might look like, petrified.
A souvenir.
*
Blessed are the housecats
whose toes are webbed
though they will not touch water.
What claws must I have
for you to believe me
when I say I will not swim.
*
It is almost impossible
to over-knead bread by hand,
but a machine can do it easily,
pounding until resilience turns rigid.
Bread made this way will break a tooth:
brutal, brittle as a moon.
*
A man once told me
I wasn’t angry enough,
as though each joy
were not a splinter of glass,
refracting light
after I extract it from my flesh.
*
In my anesthesia dream,
I am getting out the road salt
in summer.
I am bringing it to the garden.
I am sowing it carefully
in furrows.
*
The fossil comes with a note
about its metaphysical properties:
A great stone to carry during pregnancy!
The pieces rub in my pocket
like dry laughter. Listen, little mollusk:
No one on earth can tell us what we’re for.
*
I wake luminous,
with a new constellation
on my belly, in the shape
of a hieroglyph meaning no.
*
Ligation, like the ligature
that binds the reed
to the clarinet,
fastened just enough
so it can vibrate freely,
so the instrument can sing.
Amanda Hope lives in eastern Massachusetts with her cats. A graduate of Colgate University and Simmons College, she works as a librarian. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in publications including honey & lime, Barrow Street, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Construction, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Compose, where she was nominated for Best of the Net. She enjoys riding the subway, playing in brass bands, and wearing magnificent boots. You can find her on Twitter @AmandaHopePoet.