The rat is sitting in the fridge

As we crack hard boiled eggs on the countertop,
My grandmother and I,
Sorting un-exotic truths about womanhood:
“Friendship and love,” as she said, almost trite,
Yolk sloshing in her fingers,
Are paramount to lust -
You’ll know it when the mail is late
and the return address is soaked in wine…
I spill in wonder,
Raking myself for that re-activated inkling
Of boxes being dynamite, explosive,
And decidedly a whole lot worse than
Hard or holy cronyism, unshelled.
BE OF HELP! Ten, eleven leopards snarling
below the break of branches;
They’re snapping, plastic crocodiles, hippos,
the kind you knew at five years old
were hungry, hungry,
social mongers.
…insatiable, feet sleeping treacherously,
I drop down into a desert’s chest,
Into the leonine and crumbling teeth
Of leopard jeopardy.
Warm sand, and somebody tapping the bongos.
Pray thee, revert to the curled Cove
beneath the school?
Bereft of algebra - and
plagues, too?
Whereupon an ocean sings noire aurora into
The world, cave-like, crusted with a thick rim of sulfur dioxide
Diamond,
then filled with liquid turquoise,
a swimmable pulp that I’m poised to taste -
when she enters! The hazel-eyed Aquarian,
And her entourage of dolphins gushing
Up, dazzlingly, skyward - compelling me
Earthlessly
To jump in and ride them,
To fly coaster-like on them,
To surge down in a split sizzle and drown them,
To really hold them
This time,
Alongside her, among the whole
Sea of us blotting the crustaceous,
Depths -
hearts…slumbering
into the crooked sloom of a dusky dawn.