KATHRYN SMITH

You Know What They Say About Women and Apples

When my sister gave me the shiny fruit, I only wanted

to eat. I was hungry for one thing that was wholly

my own. If Eve taught us anything, it’s never

share. Keep your secrets on a string, tied in the hem

of your dress, so that in the night, as the house grows

restless with what it knows, you can answer its groans

with a thud to the floor, reel it up again like a fish

on the line. Hooked. Consider the ways the apple

betrays us: a fairy tale’s bright poison, food in the mouth

of the slaughtered hog. Battered each night against

floorboards, the apple’s skin never split, though I knew

if I put my teeth to it, I’d find no bite left unbruised.

Describe the Sensation of Being Inhabited

to live with an invisible disease, interstitial and impossible to prove

a blanket covering the inner organs

to worry the blanket’s hem with your fingers until it frays open

the telegraph wire or the message it transmits

             the wire            the message       translated vibration
 

a far-off hum that grows internal         will not be drowned

not voice but lack of voice

               finger thrum               piano hammer               glass harmonica

the ringing round and rising up to something like electricity

twitch of frog legs detached from the body

the body lulled to sleep                                                                                                         

to dream while awake and feel the dream in your limbs

              lips       eyelids             heartbeat

the doll who speaks by the pull of a string

            her frozen-faced blink           the string           the pull