The Pearl Tear, and: Pink Paperclip
Rent from DeepDyve- The Pearl Tear, and: Pink Paperclip
The Pearl Tear
In the white of your eye I see the speck of a seed pearl forming. An irritant has stuck. You can’t get free of it, nor can the speck undo the storming tissue that wraps around it, soft with tears at first, then hard with lustre. Oh my dear, I wonder when you cry will it slip down your cheek, and will you, flustered, brush the pearl away with the back of your hand? And if it lands nearby, will you notice it? Will you pick it up, marvel, and thread it onto a string of threats you’ve empearled? Or will you ignore it, failing to understand, and bare your neck again to the world?
Pink Paperclip
A pink plastic paperclip lies prone on the counter, its curve-return-curve out of reach of the dishcloth: I miss it as I swipe the crumbs into the trash with my ruthless urge to order. My husband comes by, saying “I’ve got a foster home for paperclips,” and takes it to his room, to a little box where it waits in readiness, [End Page 39] the color of a girl’s barrette. I might have chucked it, and this is why the gods terrify me. Yet they merely interest him, among all the other beings in the world, including me, whom he still finds useful, even inspiring my new goal: to personify everything, each in the bloom of its use, becoming a poet after all.
Molly Peacock is the author of six volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming The Second Blush (Norton). Her work appears in the New Yorker, the Nation, and the Paris Review, among other publications. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.
