Saturday, May 5, 2007: On the Street…Sodermalm, Stockholm

I sunk into the beanbag chair, leaning
My weight into its pliable form,
Testing its give. The lava lamp glowed,
Releasing blobs of red inside
The glass torso’s window. Like jellyfish,
Like mercury, like organs, each
Particle was self-contained, stretching
And contracting. In science class
That day, I’d learned the words pseudopod,
Cytoplasm, vacuole.
Amoeba: tiny, flabby one-celled
Organism, spread like a cracked
Egg over the textbook’s slippery pages,
But when I pressed my eye against
The microscope’s porthole, I saw only
My spidery eyelashes.