“Bioluminescence” by Pamela Wax
Bioluminescence
When my husband says divorce,
I start decorating the interior
of my cardboard tent, stock
it with cans of SpaghettiOs
and Bumble Bee (flip-topped),
re-do my hair into a wild Einstein
without the Nobel or any theories
about relativity—
so when I hear him say
incompatibility, I’m already mixing
oil with water until an unctuous coat
lays flat in the missionary position,
smothering me below deck
where I peer out a porthole
at the infinite deep—
all those sea creatures
emitting their own light—
to find an octopus, flexing its limbs,
who also prefers to live alone.
Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have received two Best of the Net nominations and awards from Crosswinds, Paterson Literary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. Other publications include Barrow Street, Tupelo Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Chautauqua, The MacGuffin, Nimrod, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Slippery Elm. An ordained rabbi, Pam works at a synagogue as an adult educator, in addition to offering spirituality and poetry workshops online and around the country. She lives in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.
