by Carolene Kurien

Oiled legs pile on top of one another,
glistening in the afternoon light.
This isn’t an orgy: it’s a feast of frog.
Appa fries and stacks them like meditation
rocks on the cooling rack. I tell the toad
watching from the backyard you’re safe, your poison
is your grace as I jenga one out from the heap.
The taste of second-hand fly murder
is pleasant to me. If I had a long, sticky tongue,
I’d trap horrible things: rich people &
bad weather. Consume everything you hate,
that’s what Amma should have told me before
I left for school. Instead I let that girl spit in my face,
as sweethearts do.

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Carolene Kurien is a Malayali-American poet from South Florida. She received her MFA from the University of Miami, where she was a James Michener fellow. A Tin House alum, she has been published in Salt Hill, Hobart After Dark, and Two Serious Ladies, and she has poems forthcoming in Redivider and the South Florida Poetry Journal.