Animals: “The Most Comforting Thing I Know” by Nicole Mitchell
Is that boas give birth to live young.
A comfort because
ladies at the supermarket
once made a commotion
over a creature, dressed in pink,
coiled in my mother’s stroller.
Surely my mother was the nanny.
Surely this incongruent constrictor did not come forth
looping and heavy-bodied,
her squalling mouth absent an eye-tooth.
I confess I ate the lie they offered –
that who I loved would make me less her child.
The un-truth went down smooth.
Stretched the sides of me, filled me out.
I only split my pulled-taut scales
when I met a girl who wore the skin of a plum.
When I remembered my mother’s yearning on a porcelain plate,
all the fruit she sliced but never swallowed.
Desire is no foreign thing to immigrants
or queers.
Now I flick my tongue against my tooth’s sharp point.
Now I dream of dimpling fruit-smooth skin.
Live birth leaves no room for chimeras or changelings.
I know if I am any creature, I am a snake
my mother’s daughter.
Ready to unhinge my jaws and gulp –
my whole body, a belly.
About Nicole Mitchell
Nicole Mitchell is a queer, mixed-race writer, educator and organizer. Her writing appears in Recenter Press, Teach Magazine, and Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, among others. She teaches elementary school in the California Bay Area. You can find her on instagram at niic.miitch.
