from Lamentation with June Bug
Published December 2013
Snake Charmer
But I can see you’re not stunned
enough, and it’s the devil’s work I see
you’re accusing me. You’re seeing
my arms and legs branch off
me like I was crisp as my snakes
and muscular as rage. You’re dying
to inquire why a lady wants to risk
her limbs if it’s got nothing
to do with divinity like I should be that
tree down in Eden folding its leaves
in prayer to keep from getting its fruits
swiped. Now when I was a copper-headed
little girl and always got put
in red to match, I’d swing out
back at the haunch of the old live
oak and press my toes into the fig
vine against Granddaddy’s work
shed who called me the apple
of his eye and laughed about me going
to be the bad one in the bunch. That made sense
to me ‘bout as much as snakes being God’s
way of punishing generosity like a birth
-day minus the cake and presents. Especially
since the first time I handled
one like it was giving itself
wrapped up to me and waiting
to get opened. Just a tiny garter
snake, but I knew that I was knowing
what to do. It was like that
for such a long time I was almost sorry
there weren’t going to be any more
secrets. And then like I’d been struck
by a poison dart, it landed on me
that those others were the gifts
saved for last. Not that I’d be drawn by anything
evil, but the way I was seeing
it, what’s got danger lying
inside’s got a subtlety going on. Maybe
the slip knot of meanness or something
elastic as the heart, something tender
and also tough with being
scared to wobble it out. But those ones
don’t lie out on your back
lawn and slither across your raised
eyebrows like they were a satin
bow come untied and streaming
like a comet’s tail in a once in your life
-time’s miracle. A surprise
party is what it was, the first one
that beaded around the big rock
like it was his glassed in front
parlor, a rattler done up
in all his bangles dancing for my warm
blood. And then it was over
and I could’ve spread a picnic
blanket and invited him for a sandwich
and berries. Later and fast as dust
devils the hooded cobra
spitting at me like he’d just learned
the alphabet and corals like party
favors, all yellow, black,
and red. I can see I’m nuts
in your eyes, but I’d like to set you
at your ease as I’ve got no mind
to belly out of here hanging
my head. I suppose
you might say I’ve come
to cherish what nobody else allows
and feel right at home with it, unlikely
as it is to you like this snake
you see threaded ‘round my calf
like a sheer stocking slipping into a shoe.
"Nancy Esposito, in these sustained sighing poems, is in it for the long game. Every long line is an event horizon. See the sea writing in long hand! There are endless highways, vectors vectoring from here till kingdom come, a time and a place at odds even with the odds. That endless, infinite line forms smack dab in the middle of nowhere and runs its course, a mobius, in the heart of the heart, warped and wonderful, a parenthetic parenthesis, the periodic morphed to ellipses..."
Michael Martone on Lamentation with June Bug
Author of Four for a Quarter and Michael Martone
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