Treehouse

Laura Kochman

When the wave came, I was watching. When it came I was twisting my fingers around the balcony railing, trying to make your strung-up holiday lights pop. The comet stirred up the waters and made them sick, and they tumbled out onto the beach, first a pulling-back and then a gallop of water. My hands twist for the oysters, the miles of middens, for their feet uprooted and torn to shreds. For my own house, for the water surrounding it. For my house has no hands to block the water. For my house has no feet to run from the sea.

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Laura Kochman, originally from New Jersey, is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where she’s also the poetry editor for Black Warrior Review. Her work is found or forthcoming in Copper Nickel, PANK, Jellyfish, The Journal for Compressed Creative Arts, alice blue review, and others.

See Laura’s 5 Things You Should Read in our ongoing contributors’ series.

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Laura Kochman

I said, my feet slip from rock to rock. I said, I am found, founded, foundering. The sand grains sift through my foundations. It takes a grain to make a pearl, but I am no mother. Don’t laugh. I have no hidden chamber, no hiding place in the rocks. The oysters plant themselves for miles, the bed a clacking, a clattering of hooves. I said, the rotation has already begun. I said, to place a hoof into a bucket of salt. To limp through the house in the night. Sometimes my feet betray me, my turning, the soft frogs sinking down to the road surface they should not touch. I said, nautilus hoof. All right—I am not prehistoric. I abide by the rules. I said, my feet are sinking in their shells. I abide. The oysters shake in their bones. The oysters shudder in their beds.

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Laura Kochman, originally from New Jersey, is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where she’s also the poetry editor for Black Warrior Review. Her work is found or forthcoming in Copper Nickel, PANK, Jellyfish, The Journal for Compressed Creative Arts, alice blue review, and others.

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Laura Kochman

Close up the garage. Put away your bucket of shells. I have been, outside, in the night light of the sea, watching. And over the sea wall it came—a comet. The oysters shuddered in their shells, and my feet quaked in the sand as I watched it. Red marrow through a black sky. Rock in place of a moon, no moon, no moon, no witness but me and the oysters, and it shook the water. And it drove a line through the sky, a red welt. I felt it on my own skin. All right—I wanted to feel it on my own, old skin. If only on my skin. If only to touch. I was a wet witness, a well of eyes, and I saw it break apart into four red lines like a chicken’s foot, and it shone on the water, and it walked on the waves.

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Laura Kochman, originally from New Jersey, is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where she’s also the poetry editor for Black Warrior Review. Her work is found or forthcoming in Copper Nickel, PANK, Jellyfish, The Journal for Compressed Creative Arts, alice blue review, and others.

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