Mani-Pedi
Footbaths bubble sudsy rainbows
and Buddha laughs a silence golden
but then the chatter flows past me again
like a river around a rock.
I’m reading a book about physics,
underlining the lines I understand.
So far I have one. Its yellow ribbon
unravels to infinity
then disappears inside a mirror’s open door.
I don’t feel like a rock
more like a pebble. The woman next to me
is texting Spanish lovers
and from her leather throne
my daughter smiles and waves.
Against the far wall, rows of colors
stand at attention, a sparkly army
ready to conquer all mankind.
Every name is a promise—
Luna, Atlantis, Up All Night, Long Kiss.
According to the line I (don’t) understand
the Universe may be a single slice
in a loaf of cosmic bread.
—
This selection comes from Lori Lamothe’s chapbook Diary in Irregular Ink, available from ELJ Publications. Purchase your copy here!
Lori Lamothe’s poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, CALYX, cream city review, Emerge Literary Journal, Seattle Review, Stone Highway Review, Third Coast, and other magazines. She is the author a full-length collection, Trace Elements (Aldrich Press), and of two other chapbooks, Camera Obscura (Finishing Line Press) and Ouija in Suburbia (dancing girl press, forthcoming 2015).
Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.
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