Poem of the Week: Kim Roberts

 

PROTANDRIC

Oysters may look to us
like wet floppy tongues,

but there’s no licking.
There’s no touching.

Oysters are protandric-
they can change sex at will.

All oysters are born male.
They change to female

the following season.
They seem to like being female

most of the time. The older the oyster,
the more likely he’ll be female.

And you thought
they were an aphrodisiac?

One male ejaculates
then every male in the colony

follows suit.  Soon the waves
look like milk.  The eggs

sway like belly dancers.  It’s spring!
Once again, it’s spring.

***

From Little Patuxent Review (Winter, 2014).

Used with permission.

***

Kim Roberts is the author of four books of poems, most recently Fortune’s Favor: Scott in the Antarctic, a series of blank verse sonnets based on the 1910-1913 journal of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, whose team was the second to reach the South Pole (Poetry Mutual, 2015). Roberts is editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010), and co-editor of the Delaware Poetry Review and the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes. Her website is: kimroberts.org.