Cate Marvin
January 2003

Boiling Rocks


I.

The object is not to make a broth from rocks,
but to pure their bodies, scald off salt and dirt.
Sea-smoothed and silent, carried from coast
to stove, they weigh the pot, dark bodies now
as hot as the flames that leap from blue to orange.
They are honeymoon rocks, rocks that stop
my heart for envy of their salt knowledge.
Tears for them are nothing, they who lie
quiet in the pot, sleek and limpid as eyes.


II.

The object was to make a broth with rocks.
As the gas flowered blue beneath the pot,
I chopped onions at a table, stopping
just once to call his name. I began with limbs
and skin, melted them into the lathering pot.
The heart wasn’t hard to unearth from his chest,
once my fingers grasped that slippery rock.
I saved the eyes for last, clinking them into
a bowl: blue jewels to roll upon the tongue.


III.

Poor rocks, outlasting the ocean’s salty scratch,
ground in its mouth only to be spat back.
What seas’ floors have you rolled along,
what tangles of inky weed have caught you
in their wrath, how was it to know the sea
would always take you back? Then feet landed
on you, eyes fell to you, and hands snatched
to drop you into a sack. You will never see
the sea again, never be moved as it moved you.

from World’s Tallest Disaster, Sarabande Books, 2001.