Lay the snapping turtle’s corpse
on a swarming ant hill,
return to it after the flesh
is joyously devoured.
Marvel at her emptied eye sockets,
hollow as canyon echoes;
the primordial pattern of her shell,
its quilted bone.
Somehow, my mother knows
the way of these things.
She tells me to soak
the skeleton in hydrogen peroxide,
let foam bubble over
until hiss fades into whisper.
What if I could turn the memory of you
into a cotton-filled creature?
The scent of carrion will overwhelm
you, she warns, almost laughing.
Dead turtle seeping into you all thicklike,
nighttime perfume on the neck.
I still remember how you spoke my name:
fennel, honey, banana liqueur, gunpowder.
On the shell’s underside, look at what remains of her spine:
each vertebra a pearlescent raindrop.
Tender bruises now suspended in the brain,
like hooks caught in a trout’s still-breathing gill.
Finally, let her rest beneath the permanent halo
of cheap spotlights, an angel rotting in your glass cabinet
the jaw positioned just so
ready to sing, ready to bite—
Maren Loveland is from Atlanta, Georgia. She is currently a PhD candidate in English at Vanderbilt University studying the aesthetics of infrastructure and documentary filmmaking.
Photo credit: Tom Fisk