Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Erika Meitner
The Bar Code of Love
I brandished the wand & pushed
scanner buttons with both thumbs,
but nothing happened.
I osterized & registered the symbols
of our union, & it wasn’t a harbinger,
but, my love, I couldn’t erase anything—
not the cast-iron griddle, too heavy to lift;
not the lovesick goblets bent at the waist
as if they performed some important task
other than holding household liquids.
In the next-stop mattress outlet, you pressed
every quilted pillowtop, then suggested we lie
with our shoes still on to check filling
& resilience, skin when we slid each slick
blue surface converging—chrome flush
that spread my chest like a walnut, as if
we hadn’t already been living in sin for years,
that bed of pictures (dirty? family?),
a future tucked into your wallet, spilling
folded laminates that accordion out like
shrugged hands. What’s in the center
of your palm besides one ring & a lifeline
dug into your skin with a grapefruit spoon?
My heart is a domed cakeplate,
150 ◆ Crab Orchard Review