Pebble Beach

I’ve always wished God could grow me down
into an egg in the snow. White on white. Piles of drift.
Back in Cincinnati my tongue grew red in the midday cold,
waiting for someone to suck it like cherry popsicle.
Those were the days I danced like Jesus was coming.
I took off my clothes and I felt very good about it, like
it was the only thing in the world. Once I petted a farm
chicken so softly she believed she had a greater purpose
than egg production. We sit cross-legged in her coop, whistling
this world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through
as reminder, as prayer. We pass through the world’s largest rubber
band ball. We pass through Penn State. We steal away
to California and sit on the hood of my car at Pebble Beach,
watch a group toss breadcrumbs at seagulls under a sign
reading NO FEEDING. They’ll approach us, ask if I saved her
from the butcher board or if her quivering eyeballs remind me
of my own. I’ll tell them she wanted to find herself outside
of her children, that the only quiver in my eyeballs is from
the wind. People don’t realize there doesn’t always have to be
some kind of tragic backstory. We could just be happy
together. It could just be that.

Carolene Kurien is a poet whose work has garnered support from MacDowell, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, and Key West Literary Seminar. Her poems have been published in Poetry London, Bennington Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. You can learn more at carolenekurien.com.