This is the Latest

Scrub the tub first. Hand off cleanser.

Rinse well. We don’t want Comet

in our lobster.

He’s clicking

against the porcelain. Everyone leery

              of going to the bathroom.

Bubbles had risen when we lowered him in,

now he’s limp.

Stare into the water

that wears a similar gooseflesh.

The lobster is dispatched.

                      *     *     *

(a coffee maker),

can’t find a swathe of paper big enough.

Start to cobble bits together

with tape (ah—chitinous)

and the joints look like repeated segments

of a carapace.

A pilot blue glows. Haemocyanin—

a blood based in copper not iron

while the broth of something Provençal

sings from the pot, a little tomatoey,

a little stigma (not stamen) of crocus sativus

under the Star of

Bethlehem

bouncing between inflation

and shrinkage, as if on a trillion-year

pendulum, why wouldn’t

an infant’s sobbing, on the exhale,

have a prosody

as on the inhale have the chemistry

of tears and seas

or our bouillabaisse,

indeed,

a primal soup contain

in the briny speech stream

a scuttling underwriter?