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Riot Party by Amanda Hartzell

August 15, 2021
Reading Time: 1 Minutes
Finalist, Summer 2021 Five South Poetry Prize

 

The heatwave cooked a million
shellfish alive in their beds
and we stand by the kitchen fan
grating lemon, rind shaved
fine and wet by pink fingers.
Hair up sweaty while
black shells gape open,
fleshy bodies laid out on ice.
Too late to know whether
you’ve ordered sick oysters
or if it was a bad time for
a clambake, the hour-eating fire
and tree fronds over raked coals
a waste, chitons and sugar kelp
exposed at low tide a warning.
Fooled by the citrus evening and
its tabasco sun, the party swells.
Everyone shows up like they own
the soft mess of their bodies,
their pale hunger and illness,
like they won’t one eager summer
be cleaned and cracked open.

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Poetry

Hartzell, Amanda
Amanda Hartzell lives and writes in Seattle with her husband, son, and their dog. Her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and appears in Breakwater Review, Carve Magazine, Kestrel, The Knicknackery, and New Letters, among others. She holds an MFA from Emerson College in Boston. Her chapbook, "The Heart Never Pretends to Be a Beautiful Muscle," is forthcoming by Finishing Line Press.

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