NANCY PEARSON

NOTES TO A CLAM

As a child, I lost two halves of a mouth. A shucked space where the tub wrecked one summer night, replaced my front teeth with a void that soon forgot which loss it mapped. Rice-like they dallied then sunk. In the meat-red spit, the soap circled. My mother, sand-quick & running for the car; my father still fishing in the lukewarm water—this, the last year of a marriage. All night my small mouth raked without its razor tines. I do not remember this or my father weeping afterwards in the tender field, pea picking in the star-sprouted evening, life's extractions piled green & sea-surrounding. Later that night, a strange wind off-hitched every pod and downed. By morning, only muscle scars where the fruit once hinged.

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