THE MARBLE
I had no notion I could outsmart my older brother
until one morning I suggested he catch marbles
in his mouth. I would drop them from above
as he lay head back on the sofa. Some danger
of swallowing, I knew – but none that he'd resist
a sporting challenge. He was so absurdly pleased
when he caught the little sulphur-yellow one.
He spat it into his palm and blindly handed it back to me –
arm straight as a slot-machine lever. But I had
a bigger one up my sleeve, with a scarlet swirl trapped
in the glass: a streak of blood in a shrunken museum.
How my belly warmed to his gullibility as he gulped
it down and his eyes bulged in disbelief then alarm
and there was my marble: an inflamed eye – my own spy –
travelling irreversibly through him like one that
knows its way: oesophagus, stomach, duodenum –
a 360-degree X-ray camera surveying enemy territory
from within – rotating through the passages and labyrinths,
learning and recording liver, lungs, and every chamber
of his bullying heart; small intestine, large intestine –
and oh my out-of-body ecstasy
when he was under orders to use a potty,
our mother having to rake through every motion
with a dinner fork until at last a cry of joy. First published in The Rialto, Issue 83
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