Snail — Blackbird Archive

← v14n1, Spring 2015

She plucks the one

with the slowest glide,

the endless scrolled home,

and cooks the flesh

until the sky goes slack.

The man is unimpressed.

The meal, a mouthful

at most, cultivates

an emptiness.

Their bodies take

to one another like knife

to apple skin. The nick.

Then the slow spiral,

red and unbroken.

desire body food

Celeste Lipkes

Celeste Lipkes’ poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle , Smartish Pace , Bellevue Literary Review , and Unsplendid , among others. Her poem “Victor” received a second-place William Carlos Williams prize in 2014, and she has been an artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Lipkes earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia and is pursuing an MD from Virginia Commonwealth University. Photo by Jeff Lipkes