Laura Cresté
Egg Party
The spring my systems go wrong, I throw a party
where the theme is eggs. Chicken eggs deviled
and overburdened. Caviar held precariously
to potato chip by a slick of cream.
The idea is rebirth, claim whatever rituals
remain palatable. Spring of resisting
augury, not interpreting what it means
that one part of my body wants
to kill another part. In the dark
socket of jar, the black roe teem.
Some people are nauseated by clusters:
a shucked pomegranate disclosing its cells,
studded face of a sunflower enough to swoon.
That’s not what makes me sick. I spoon,
I scratch the blood from boiled egg halves
with a fingernail. I am now buzzing
with terrible purpose: white blood cells
assemble in my throat, like a swarm
of ants taking down larger prey;
I’ll be obvious and picture a butterfly,
the thyroid always described as a winged gland.
Meanwhile, I go on chopping dill and tapping
eggs open against the sink. My friend, a twin, helps peel—
cracks a double-yolk and misses her sister.
This spring, in the forest, a small bird hooked onto my palm
with devastating trust. Two sunflower seeds slotted into her beak
as I fit into my life, almost comfortably,
almost equal to the task, the daily braveries required.
At the party where no one is heartbroken, there’s a touching
fidelity to theme. The florals and golds. The small wants.
Egg whites fizzing the whiskey in our cups.
The possible fish popping against teeth.
Laura Cresté reads “Egg Party”
Laura Cresté is the author of the chapbook You Should Feel Bad, which won a 2019 Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from New York University and received a 2021–22 fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her debut full-length collection, In the Good Years, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2025.