Rhonda Lott // Poetry

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(D)evolution

Writing a sestina is like watching a scrap

between a couple fishing

vainly for some amoeba

in common. She gnaws

at overcooked eggs;

He stares at a carpet crawling with paisley.

Usually, there is not much to say about paisley,

but nonetheless it sneaks into the scrap,

as each one eggs

on the other.  The fishy

line she spouted yesterday has gnawed

his mind into an amoeba.

He tries to explain how amoebas

are like paisley,

or perhaps vice versa.  The gnawing

continues.  She tosses a scrap

of ham to the kitten whom she insists would prefer catfish.

After all, the tastiest animals hatch from eggs.

But he has never liked eggs,

over-well or otherwise, he counters (an amoeba-

boned remark, but true), and neither fish-

net stockings, nor a week in Paisley

itself could save a single scrap

of truth or stop the gnawing.

She postpones her gnawing

and swallows the eggs

to remind him that this scrap

would not have happened if their one amoeba

in common had not died and become paisley

under the lens, never evolving into fish.

Reason collapses.  Fish

gnaw

paisley

eggs

in the wreckage.  One misfit amoeba

drives me to scrap

it all; for in the end, text eggs cannot hatch live fish

and scarcely seem akin to gnawing amoebas

or paisley scraps.

Rhonda Lott is currently working on an M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she graduated with a B.A. in English at age 19.  During the same year, she received the Emily Pestana Undergraduate Poetry Award.  Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Quarterly, and she has served as a guest editor for Stirring.  Rhonda is originally from Perkinston, Mississippi.

Date of Publication: 29 Oct 2007