Entries from The Lover’s Field Guide
- Entries from The Lover’s Field Guide
If collecting nectar from a black mangrove, observe the pencil-like tubes extending upward from the root system. These shoot poison darts.
The Atlantic deer cowrie has a fawn-brown porcellana and big, limpid eyes.
When handling the Southern leopard frog it is best to whip it sidearm, maximizing speed while eliciting its balloon-like chuckle. The Eastern narrow-mouthed toad can be lobbed underhand.
Amethysts can be harvested from the spines of L. M. Montgomery books. They are abundant in sections describing consumptive deaths of key characters.
If shelling for angel wings do not confuse them with the American piddock, false angel wing — a variety of venus clam notable for its small size, lack of radial ribs, and salty vocabulary.
When the temperature rises above 2,300 degrees and 60 kilobars of pressure is applied to any common household balalaika, jade is formed.
Peridot is an Atlas, hoisting entire islands upon its craggy shoulders.
The teenage crane fly goes through a rebellious period during which it will demand to be called by its alternate name, “Mosquito Hawk.”
The horseshoe crab’s aliases have included Saucepan, Sword-tail, and Cyclops. He resents these implications. He hails from scorpions. [End Page 49]
Tourmaline has been re-created in laboratories using packing twine and cumin.
Weasel fur lasts longer than mink, which is why nine out of ten minks choose weasel when acquiring coats for winter.
Garnets are best smuggled tucked into the hide folds of an Indian rhinoceros.
You can tell the wentletrap is carnivorous by its purple flesh, and the welcome mat it places at the foot of its turret.
The painted turtle is an unreliable narrator.
Moonstone occurs naturally in three out of five roller-skating rinks, while the dreams of horses are often mistaken for citrine.
A giant water bug is also known as a “toe-biter”; in Florida, as an “alligator tick”; in Nevada, as the “great horned whatthefuck”; in the Marais Poitevin region, as “Claude”; and in Thailand as Maeng Daa, with plum sauce for dipping.
400 million years in, ammonites wonder what more they can do. Check out those whorled chambers. Do you appreciate the difficulty of radial symmetry?
Owing to flexible hip joints, a marsh wren can straddle from branch to branch, cattail to cattail. He grasps a dried-out reed in each claw and, using them as chopsticks, feeds spiders into his darling’s gullet.
A man itemizes all the ways he will fail his woman. If only he’d become a paramedic. If only he baked bread. He falls asleep clenching his jaw. There is topaz embedded in his back molars, but he will never find it. [End Page 50]
Sandra Beasley is the author of I Was the Jukebox (2010), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling (2008), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. Honors for her work include the Lenoir-Rhyne University Writer in Residence position, the University of Mississippi Summer Poet in Residence position, two DCCAH Artist Fellowships, the Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the Maureen Egen Exchange Award from Poets and Writers. Her most recent book is Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (2013), a memoir and cultural history of food allergy. She lives in Washington, DC.
