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.
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.
11/8 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
11/8 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray and local poet Judy Ireland / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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