A Cup is a Journey

After Rodney Gomez’s, A knife

 

What can be said about a cup that hasn’t already been said:

 

A Cup is womb, lost twin, nipple, teat, wailing baby, bird beak. Cup-hands feed bran to horses, donkeys, asses.  Cups are broth pots, peat bogs, digits across oceans, borders, lips of boats.  Cups are homeless shelters, empty doorways, under bridges, bowels, refugee camps, food banks, belly full, or not. Cups are brackish river, sewer, tap, spills, slicks, puddles of silt, divots.  Cups are optical illusion, dark moon, sun full of steam, custard. Cups are can, jar, bowl of leaves, tea cosy, slippers, wedding ring. Cups are spoons of maple syrup, marmalade, mud-cup nests, hope chests, kist’s at footwells of box-beds. Cups are bells, singing bowl, sonnet. Cups are tulip, Canterbury bell, pasqueflower. A cup is Serengeti, Shenandoah, Loch Ness. Cups are hands dunked in water, slurped, lipped, lapped. Cups are picnic, pity-party, pickling hip flask. Cups were toasts, axe, knuckles, bottles, malt barrels, strangle-hands. Cups are handless on floors, smashed in sinks. Cups are font, shroud, six feet under a fistful of earth. Cups are potholes of tears, snot, cracks. Cups on console tables are holdalls for cowslips, bluebells, daffodils. Cups are origami, kintsugi, gold. A cup is the cave after King of all Kings, thorns, nails, cross — Carrier of sins, acorns. Cups are tincture of olive, psalm, salt, balm. A cup is a well of forgiveness. A Cup is a seed.

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Mandy Beattie’s poetry appears in places such as: Poets Republic, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Dreich, Wordpeace, The Haar, Wordgathering, Spilling Cocoa, Last Stanza and Lothlorien. She is Winner of Poets Choice in Marble Broadsheet and was shortlisted in Dreich’s Black Box Poetry Competition. She has a forthcoming short story in the inaugural edition of, Howl. 

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