Mary Zartman

Carcharadon Megalodon

My Eureka falls out of the closet

and any sensible cat runs for the basement rafters.

Even with a vacuum the kitchen table

legs have got fur.

I have to get on my knees

with a damp rag to do a good job.

Old lavender projects

shed stems on the hallway floorboards,

making cotton-candy sticks of cat hair.

The door to the basement is usually open,

behind it are pots on hooks,

and a poster from the American Museum

of Natural History of an ancient shark jaw—

very cool.

Something from work free-piled long ago.

Why it is still there wrapped in plastic,

yet un-affixed, and perched next to the molding

is another sign of good work left undone.

Downstairs, next to the boiler,

it is endless laundry.

My son’s clothes keep coming.

I finger up the lint in the dryer trap

and wonder is this human or cloth–?

They were right, you know—

the women who warned me

not to get married; not to give birth;

not to devote my self to any thing but art.

It is all I can do to keep up

with the eternal piles

of clothes, books, papers; enigmatic plastic things

that need to be sorted, cleaned,

put away, taken out, used, put away

again and again and again.

As I cook dinner I get a pot off the rack,

dizzy with chores, I look down.

There it is—maw,

ancient devourer,

behind the door on the floor

still wrapped in its retail cellophane

yelling, eating, swimming in poster board primordial ooze,

saving its wide reach

for when I quit myself and come to.