For breakfast I have filled
a pan with coconut oil &
trembling petunias, that tobacco
cousin that I now season w/ the underside
of nothing. The scent of night?
Gone. You can’t mix petunias
w/ petunias. It’s daytime now,
birdsong clanging at the window
& the ocean tripping over itself
like a lime-green staircase.
I’m handing you a word, it’s
“circumference,” & you catch
my drift immediately. Circumference
hula-looping your lips. The private
garden of your sternum bare.
I want to say a different word, it’s
“happy,” but I don’t because
the omelet is fluffing, its pale
pocked face wants flipping,
& the banged shreds of what I once called
ecstasy are obviously just
petunia skins, cruising in the
batter.
Another Way to Say Hello
Emily Vizzo
Emily Vizzo’s chapbook Giantess is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2018, and her novel is represented by Frances Goldin Literary Agency in New York. She is based in California