Nell’s Ode
She is spherical, like a globe. I could find out countries in her.
Comedy of Errors 3.2.116-117
All that is great in me might be made little
by a word. But I will spin you a tale
that brings you in again for every orb
is an icon, and every kitchen
an abattoir birthing appetites. You
name, but in the kitchen Fire
is the force worth knowing. I am swart
as the earth’s crust, soot as the banked embers,
hot as a devil’s dam inside
just like this mantled world, and I
will swallow you in me so that
the map lines of your life are lost. By me
you are a stranger made a woman’s man
uncertain to himself within the wheel—
if what that means is that you turn (but just
as I turn) toward you and away.
As if you ever could stop burying
in me desires that I raise in you.
Elizabeth Sylvia is a writer and teacher who lives off the coast of Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama and is forthcoming in Noctua Review.