dead salmon
ugly in a supermarket,
I press my belly against the dead salmon in the fish aisle
and I feel like I ate the sun and put you all out of your misery
by darkening the galaxy and making your crops wilt, I mean
look at those cornstalks, thinner than me, you’d probably go to bed,
with a nice shelled pea shoot,
but not me, as I keep expanding, flushing stars down my bellybutton
where there’s an all-seeing eye now,
because I think on my way to senseless gluttony I swallowed god too,
which is just like god because you wouldn’t notice god
entering you, and I bet god is thinner than me, I just know it,
by the slant of Alpha Centauri and the smirk of that old snake
who could squeeze between aisles where I don’t.
the whole universe was made to mock my little fishy flabs,
there’s nothing really round in it,
I can tell you they lied to you, the planets don’t have circumference,
rotundity means there ought to be
something inside, some well of meaning,
a womb, a waiting room, the gummy head of dolls,
but this yoghurt cup is empty, I emptied it,
nothing’s inside, and I can tell you,
the universe is not expanding, it’s me
that’s pushing it outwards
with my belly pressed up
against the dead salmon.
Florina Nastase is an Assistant Professor at 'Alexandru Ioan Cuza' University in Yassi, Romania. She holds a PhD in American poetry, and spends too much time writing fan fiction online under various guises. She has been published in Kajet Journal and High Shelf Press, and hopes to publish more original fiction and nonfiction.