RUMINATION AT PIEDRAS BLANCAS LIGHTHOUSE

“Your powers are great, are growing”
— Chen Chen from “Summer”

When I have been myself I’ve been spit back
something bitter on the tongue of someone bitter
at the way their life has gone
all the thems they thought they’d be
what they could have been
reflected perhaps
in my me-ness when I’m being my most me
my moistest most marinated mega-me
it's not been often
when I find that sort of power
usually I’m more like the fat monarch
caterpillar drunk on milkweed
beaked by a backyard finch
or worse stillborn
in the blackened wreckage
more often I’m that sort of beautiful disappointment
a failed potential that keeps things
interesting
but sometimes when the conditions are just
right planets stars suns aligned whatever sign rising
this power beams out of me
and I shine I moon I gleam
with a pearlescent brightness that razes cities
creates whole worlds
my mother-of-pearl mouth
my clam-pink tongue
some say yes delicious more please
others wretch and curse and worse
do their petty little violences
but it's all the same to me
cleaved from the nacreous dream
my shell still sings
catching light sending light
a warning a signal a beacon