Miguel Murphy
Miguel Murphy is the author of Detainee and A Book Called Rats, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry. He lives in Los Angeles where he teaches at Santa Monica College.
He Says, Oyster
Tongue’s
pleasure like the torture artist’s
cleft in two: at Tricks
he says he won’t eat
seafood that reminds him
of a woman’s down-there. Her what?
Who saying oyster
grimaces? As if he weren’t
tasting his final
fulsome morsel. As if he
weren’t one of us
cowering with delight
remembering the ceremony
when we liked how
we were loved. As one
taking the other’s
enemy skin in. Enjoying
the tonguing, fingering & being
himself the oyster
sucked clean of
salt & warm lemon,
entered
& stolen from
& used. Another man’s
rough mouth at these tinged wet
edges, vulnerable & wrinkled
lying in succulent
mignonette. Labial
& tough ribbon. Heat’s
black-gummed house—
A plate of mouths
& the imagined accusation of so
many heated, pulsing silences. . .
His self-loathing
loathes me. Try,
I said. Say, oyster. Pocket of Oil. Heart’s
Carafe. The wine
spilled with laughter
& shame, but I’m serious—
Enjoy it with your eyes
closed. It’s homesick,
but say, Mother—
Muscle of Love, Little Moist & Plosive
Purple, Morbid Mouth. . . Vampiric
Lyric, Lingering. . .
For aren’t these silken
oysters also
dying like him?
It can’t hurt
to say it, for your own sake.
Now, here. Taste.