The Question Of Who

By ERIKA ALEXIA TSOUKANELIS

 

I asked my teacher who he was.

Man, I said, who are you really?

 

Twinkling his mirth, he stood at my height

and looked into my eyes, and his eyes were

my eyes, looking back into me.

 

I swooned. I fell back across the

land my teacher calls home, and my

breasts were just hilltops, my belly

a lake, and the space between my

thighs was a grove of ripe life busy

and blooming its plum trees and figs.

My legs grew and circled the

whole of this earth, my feet catching

up to the rocky ledge of my shoulders.

 

Teasing, my teacher bent forward and tickled my toes.

I am this tickle, he said, and this tickle too.

And with that, an owl flew from my lips,

laughing a great hoot of wisdom.