Mercy by Nicole Santalucia

squats between a fact, an opinion, a belief, and a judgment,

and the difference between naked and nude is candied 

fruit. Lesbians: they fall on you in the middle of the night. 

It happens to the best of us—anger in our ears,

around our tongues—falling on the bedroom floor. 

The lesbian eventually wears off. Held by the scruff,

I swallow my house key every morning just in case 

I get locked out. I also get to live with lady finger 

plants and pluck feathers off my face 

until faith becomes habit. Under every fruit is 

another fruit and women telling the truth smells

like asparagus with its skin peeled off.

Lock her up makes sense because I am 

in a padded room. Or is that me trapped 

in a Merwin poem about to self-pollinate? 

I wonder if I smell like a lesbian, if he’ll notice

that I crawled into the last stanza of “Mercy” 

to piss on the side of the road. Not a person, but a bear, 

or bird that’s been hunted spits truth into my mouth

and I spit it right back in its eye as if the cure is

hissing until our mouths dry out.

Nicole Santalucia is the author of The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press). Her work is forthcoming in publications such as The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, North American Review and others. She teaches at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

21 August 2023