Airbnb Art by Christian Gullette

Under a Sputnik-shaped lamp, 

a Picasso print with three eyes.

My husband’s prosthetic eye 

is as blue as the other. 

After the surgery, 

we had sex,

his eye under a gauze tent. 

I injected lidocaine through a tube that

coiled behind the bandage.

I cleaned his armpits 

with a washcloth.

There were still traces 

of a purple arrow 

drawn by the nervous surgeon.

The ocularist hand-painted his pupil.

It looks like the eye I always loved.

Christian Gullette is a National Poetry Series finalist and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Pleiades, Northwest Review, and other journals. He was a finalist for the 2021 Four Way Books Levis Prize. He serves as the editor-in-chief of The Cortland Review. 

31 January 2022