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Herpes Limpet
Marta Núñez Pouzols




The body comes up with flourishes, such as appendix, spleen, and wisdom teeth. A flourish loves infection, it’s a secret until it bursts. Leo’s never had herpes, which surprises him. He wonders whether his immune system is too good. He says: Maybe it’s time to give oneself credit for the battles that one fights without even knowing it. My herpes once in a while materializes around my mouth, and once it did on my eyelid. The doctor scolded me because she thought I meant I had herpes in my eyeball. Herpes on your eyelid can wait. 
There is nothing like the first herpes. I was fourteen and I had just come from my first literary workshop. I was pleased I was brutally honest and said the piece we read didn’t move me. Anyway, I got back home and sat on the couch with my parents. I started feeling this foreign amber pus jewel tearing my lip from the inside. I think I even had a fever. It was a drooling, ecstatic sort of pain that left no headspace for anything else. The breakout had a beautiful sense of purpose, a one-way will.  After the cratered pimple arrived at the highest point of its exteriority, the pain subsided. With the pain’s absence, the pimple started to dry out. It got hard-hard.

I also had one for years on my left heel. I was very fond of it and my foot gestated it at the swimming pool. This one was different: it was hard as hell from the start. It was like a white volcano with other tiny white volcanoes peeking from within. I just assumed it was a new part of me, but it went away when I stopped going to the pool. Later on, I had these light stains on my shoulders and upper arms that apparently were fungi as well. I was shocked at the diversity of mushrooms thriving in my body. Phil says that oysters and mussels are more similar to mushrooms than they are to animals. They don’t have a nervous system, so they don’t feel pain. They can’t break down. Instead, they spread or they just wait. A Spanish expression says: bored as an oyster. As a child I would not leave my dad’s side. His friends used to call me limpet. Limpet is way more elegant than lapa. Pegada como una lapa. Stuck like a limpet. A nymph limps into a lame pity party. And so limpets become rock between a sea and a hard place.
 More bored than an oyster. Dumber than a bucket. Blind as a brick. Sillier than an Indian’s pipe. Sillier than a liquor cabinet. Burned as a motorcycle. Hornier than a churro. Uglier than beating a father up. Comfortable as a squid in its own ink. Older than sticks. Older than the year 1. Rougher than a plow. By night, mysterious. By day, just frayed.



Verbatim II Marta Núñez Pouzols




This poem was made using a technique that I started practicing years ago. Every single line is a quote coming from things people have said to me, snippets of overheard conversations, text messages, and social media. The utterances have been sometimes left intact, and others fragmented or recombined.

I collected them over the course of a summer and then slowly rearranged them into the pieces they are now. I call this method verbatim.


nicolás says I need to go hungry

this is the motel where psycho was shot

really?

what have i gotten myself into

just a six-month old puppy

and no one wants to come to my house

we all need to go to pino montano

because she’s the matriarch, poor thing

male hormones help lemur females rule

a dinner for everyone to meet the new bf

and your dad and uncle won’t stop

fighting about nutrition

we drive by sugar kingdom hell

such a lack of interest in the lost colony

sorry for still believing in humanity mom

people drive their trucks to the very shore

lost in translation we’re the last ones to leave

did you know china hates virgos

don’t make me explain air miles to her

vaya.

those are called cat tails

no they’re not

they look like burned hot dogs

I sent him a picture and you know what he said?

vaya.

some people don’t say anything

others get mad

are you ok sir?

no response

tauruses are no competition

just a six month old puppy

verdict: I won the beach

vaya.

you sent me a pic for me to see it so I saw it

what else do you want me to do

I talk about sausage and hot dogs as if they were the same

and my roommate is losing his patience

our first thanksgiving while at sbarro

but he liked it when I said

halloween is an anglosaxon thing

my nightmare is

she’s mailing you shoe boxes full of

pictures of herself and you say that’s normal?

I forced myself to look at the tracheostomy

it could have been grosser

we ran out of coffee and

I don’t want to see that face again

do you prefer earrings that dangle or that

stay close to the earlobe

I don’t know if I’m more of a fan of

John Waters or Pam

a reaggeton album for my cat

is moon palace dead?

can’t stop crying at the greensboro train station

a southwest version of the shining hotel

do you have some peanuts

back2back but it’s family trips

love bombing me til the end of time

everyone gets a spreadsheet

diagnostic russian roulette

qué random

this fanny pack’s been around the block

I wish someone said that about me

making me sound smarter than I am

everything I need but dessert

crying in whatsapp at 5am

it’s already morning over there

when I still thought she was a normal cat

my heart goes out to you

my back wheels up in the air

twerking for a cause