Escape to Nowhere
by Flower Conroy

APPLE CORE OF MY FATHER'S EYE

At birth: some babies are relieved to be born,
freed from their claustrophobic sleeping bags.
Some resemble reptiles or snowmen or plucked

poultry waiting to be buttered & salted.
Some drool old fools’ gummy smiles
tickled by their own gaseous trampolines.

Other newborns automatically mourn
their ejection & only want to worm back-
wards into their snail shell corridors,

into that dark cardinal slime.
When I was born I summoned with me evening
& hail: interrupted a Friday night poker game

& dinner of Cornish hen. Storm relieved it-
self. In the nursery, I peered into the barrel
of the camera—into the glare of bent light

on the lens like a sliver of silver—into that
other’s unseen eye on the far side of the glass
frame. I can’t remember what shucked

thought germinated just then—you translated
my name from girl—when piercing flash
entered me—bullet—or crossbow’s arrow.