Confections

Mariya Deykute

Some things start

in the dark—sea

urchins, though

inside they are

made of light

bone, crystallized

sugar, like skulls

sold by the roadside

on the Day of the Dead,

their red mouths

a kiss of bright paint:

brittle and sweet.

I imagine we’ll taste

just like that

when we stumble into

our feather death.

Red swirls, handmade:

the old, dark picnic.

Mariya Deykute was originally made in Russia, aged for eleven years in select small towns and then imported for further refinement into Brooklyn, New York. She attended Brooklyn College, majored in archaeology  and spent a lot of time thinking about ghosts, Viking-age sheep bones and Indiana Jones. Since then she’s lived in Montreal, Jerusalem, St. Petersburg and New Mexico. She now attends UMass Boston; climbs trees; writes musicals and plays; teaches poetry and literature and sails on tallships. She has no plans to grow up. Her poems have appeared in Other Rooms Press, Meat for Tea and Inkspill.