Set back from a country road,
the garage door rolled up just enough
for headlights to find their way in
from a Buick parked in high grass.
A card table sags under longnecks
and a tin bowl of oysters on ice,
cold as river stones,
slick in their own secrets.
Guests arrive in twos and threes,
never arm in arm.
Girls from the sewing floor,
a teacher, a bus driver,
a kitchen hair-dresser
reading Rita Mae Brown
while her kids are off at school.
Around the folding table,
rouge and perfume, denim and rayon
press in close.
“I don’t bother with men,”
tossed off like a joke
then lingering.
“Roommate,” “cousin,” “family friend”
drift and settle
over potato salad, saltines, and hot sauce.
“Hungry?” Jackie asks,
wiping her hands on a rag
steeped in oil and Old Spice.
She wears her father’s shirts,
collar open at the throat,
silver comb in her pocket,
small, bright badge.
With steel pocketknives
we learn to shuck,
wrists twisting at the hinge
until the shell gives;
a wet, sudden ache.
Salt gathers in the curve,
a quiet gleam
small enough
to slip past the teeth.
Jackie shows us how to slide the blade,
loosen what clings,
tip the body back with a flick.
We lick the sharpness
from our fingers,
tongues taking in metal, brine,
the faint grit.
Oyster shells rattle into a bucket,
knobbed layers,
the sea gone hard.
Someone drops a needle
on a scratched-up record:
Aretha demanding respect,
Gladys on the midnight train.
Jackie points at the oil-dark floor,
then pulls a battered sack
from under a workbench.
Corn starch, cheap and stubborn,
used to stiffen uniforms.
She slits the bag,
passes it to the nearest pair of hands.
Fingers plunge in,
come up ghosted.
Short, bare nails
dust the floor,
like flour on a board,
casting a thin, bright veil
over grease and tire tracks.
Stockinged feet step from high heels,
hips kiss,
a palm grazes the small of a back
and lingers
when the other woman leans in.
The first steps sketch
footprints in the starch,
two pairs, then four.
And there, in Jackie’s garage,
door shut, latch drawn,
oysters gleaming in knobbed shells,
we sway in the makeshift snow.