EXHAUST FOUND HERSELF INSIDE AN EMPTY SNAIL SHELL

A private spiral, whiff of yuck bit off her trail of pummel slick. The shell was cold, and damp, and empty. 

Exhaust feared the snail’s return would poison cork her uncooked void, any moment, any nowness, replace her empty shellness, resting mess of nestness. 

So Exhaust shrank back and back, shore receding, shove and smudge and grope, fractal nothing to divide her weight by zero up the empty coil recoil, until she found the smallest cone of curl, exhaled her thereness speechness. 

But still she feared outside the empty shell, its runs and boils, and so Exhaust took up her size and pulled and pushed all overhang and bulge as small as small, then smaller still inside the empty shell, and waited for the snail. 

THE ITCH TANK

Windows here don’t work right. They’re not mirror sunshinesafe with eyes trained out, but sinking in. My inside view is blank so even glass cupped broken squint can’t see past ruffled knifeprint pupil. 

The neighbors glance and see a zoo. The room’s scraped empty, foundation excavate, invade a squirm and squeeze. 

I crave, please store me, but no tissue, bag, or cardboard box is safe. I spread my own paint thin to walls. I grab a sheet of jostle dust to floatcollect unplanned array, no rag rub complicate or jealous trace, just mundane display of a slimy shrine.

WHERE TO APPLY THE IMPULSE 

When the walkway is paved with felt and food, you’ll know.

When your ears stretch string into bone and drop notes on the floor, you’ll know.

When clouds slice the sun, twin yolks wide, and paper rains from each half, you’ll know.

When each fork of aspirin leads to a ring of bees, you’ll know.

When hand knits knuckle to silk, spent mouth behind mouth-bent back, and all you hear is tin, you’ll know.

When each face scowls on each roll, 

and each rind wraps each seed and flies back soft, 

when wood grows teeth out your neck,

and fire beats lies,

and plastic teaches beaks to bark and spit to crawl,

you’ll know what to do.

Kate Powell Shine (she/her) lives in Maryland, where she is active in numerous literary communities including those at Montgomery College, Montgomery County Public Libraries, and the Eastern Shore Writers Association. She has had poems published in anthologies and magazines including FuseLit, Gargoyle, and Little Patuxent Review. She was a finalist
in the 2024 Enoch Pratt Free Library Poetry Contest, and she is co-editor of the poetry anthology, Echoes Through the Stacks.
Her recent writing explores themes of isolation and illness via grotesque humor and the surreal. She has struggled with mental and physical illness for most of her life.

Featured image in this post is, “Thésée-la-Romaine” by Daniel Jolivet, licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.