Hilary Sallick
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Cave Dwellers

​The tarantula dozes
in a glass aquarium
in a dark and dusty pet-store
Maybe she who comes from burrows
does not mind the lack of light
though surely she’d prefer
soft walls around her
and freedom
to move through them

The man at the cash register
sits in his creaking chair
man with large belly
and sad eyes
man who speaks
with stops and starts
He keeps her beside him
She is his     He is hers
her aggression     and stored-up
poison      his hands her source
of water and food

He loves to show her off
the fangs   the eyes
the silk thread winding out
taut at his tug
the dark spinneret

His awe is childlike
She never grows old

So they are contained together
day by day
shy and sheltered in this place
They even smell alike--
scent of accumulation
of time     of creatures
that come and go

Postpartum

The young mother by the cafe window
babe in arms     brushes her lips over
that velvet pulse    her newborn’s head
then passes the child
drooping bundle      across the table
to her friend     Now she can eat

I sit at an interior table
my hands free
these twenty years

People pass by outside rain
blowing chill
an African lady       in her stiff
shiny cloth     a trio of students
bareheaded   backpacked

The mother receives her child again
digs in her bag with one hand
pulls out a garment
slips it over her head
arranging it just so
to cover herself and her child

The drape hides secret
of mouth and nipple    of
body making milk     of body
receiving      I know
the now of it
right now      the force
of that suck    the ache of pressure
breaking
--
Hilary Sallick is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Love Is A Shore (Lily Poetry Review Books) and Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press). Her poems can be found in Notre Dame Review, Leon Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Small Orange, Ibbetson Street, Inflectionist Review, and other journals. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she serves on the Board of the New England Poetry Club. She lives and works in Somerville, MA. 



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