LESLIE McGRATH
The Pearl
Some women cook for pleasure, some for love.
Still others cook to pass the time, or let
the time pass them like traffic, while the stove
is sanctuary, the sink a place to rest
their weight against the coolness of enamel.
The heart’s best work is done by hands
scrubbing dirt and pulling fruit from bramble.
This colander of oysters makes demands
I gladly meet. I pop the hinge of each
the way a burglar picks a lock—with care—
and drop the salty flesh that I’ve unsheathed
into the waiting pot. Time simmers there
while the pearl in the fold of my left breast
awaits formaldehyde mignonette.
Leslie McGrath has worked as a psychotherapist, an options trader, and an artist’s model. Her poems have appeared in The Connecticut Review, Nimrod, Black Warrior Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. Her reviews have appeared in The Cortland Review and Poet Lore. She was the winner of the 2004 Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She received her MFA in literature and poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in the village of Noank, Connecticut.