POETRY BY TAMARIA DEL RIO

HER MOUTH OPENS WIDE LIKE A PARABLE

She stares into the fan on the ceiling. She imagines a spider sliding down its web and into her

throat. She imagines her head on fire. Lightning hitting the top of her skull. How it would fall

apart like petals on an old rose, one piece from each side until all that was left was the center, the

stem that tried holding everything together. The spider’s legs would touch the sides of her throat

and it would tickle. The tag on her pants sometimes gets inside her underwear and she never

knows how it happens or where she is or why the sky sometimes makes her head hurt. She thinks

about the clouds coming together in front of the sun and how they grow veins. Sometimes she

holds her sneezes in so she won’t be loud. Sometimes she thinks someone’s staring at her but

really they’re just reading the bus timetable.

Tamaria del Rio is a Mexican-Korean-American poet, a founding editor of San Diego-based zine and reading series Madwoman Etc., and a contributing editor of Poetry International. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has most recently appeared in No Tokens.