While reading I rub an eraser over the fingerprints and smears. My nail picks at a tick of broccoli, still green. Will I turn the page to find... Blood? Garlic? Used toothpick cradled in the book’s crease? People eat. People eat and read. The library affords me the act of taking many poets to bed, my thighs purring against hard, little book-backs. But I won’t break bread over the borrowed. I’ll leak and crust on the ephemeral, the daily, the periodical. My napkins should be the narratives of wallow and domination, those toxics, for the destiny of fish wrap is that of the food scrap and pizza box: to be taken in and expelled, as we slobber on , chronic, bossy. Now this book? It can last. We will keep it clean.
M. Nasorri Pavone’s poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, River Styx, New Letters, Harpur Palate, The Midwest Quarterly, DMQ Review, La Fovea, Quiddity and elsewhere. She also writes plays. Her latest, Feeding Time celebrated its world premiere at the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival. She is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles and lives in Venice, California.
