HAVE YOU EATEN YET? is how to say: by Kyra Jee an ekphrastic response to “Coloring Book 63” by Sable Elyse Smith Hello, you scrambled egg of a person! Sorry, I still can’t tell whether that’s an insult or a No, no, it’s a good thing Thing. But you must know it’s true: that if I were to cry, What, you egg! and stab you, oh statuesque arbiter, ye prime exemplar of marble astute, you must know something much brighter than usual would come. After all, no veins in this marble. No veins, which might otherwise imply some abstract brittleness. Or age. You egg-scrambled being. Robes like a temple but the halo is in the wrong place; it’s bubbling across your face instead of hovering, a corona aureole oreo halo, obscuring the flat or crook or shelf of your nose; the pinch or agrarian corrugation of your brow— and to make matters worse, it’s flavored like raspberry-pie soda bubbles! Bubble your face, bubble the shoulder, bubble your elbow, the open hole where your robe’s wrist sleeve flares out. Did you know that ancient Chinese emperors hid Pekingese dogs in their sleeves? I like to think of Pekingese dogs that peek and climb out from silk hems onto the table, sneaking bites of egg noodle dishes. Where did you other two fingers go, my courtroom gumshoe? How can you string the bow or braid the anesthesia of love- -making without your first two fingers? We do not discern gender here—the yolk obstructs the sex, by which I mean there is yellow paint stricken over the majority of your columned body. Not that you invest eggs in your sex life. Nor that I am trying to make a subliminal point about eggs and the reproductive system, which I’m not. But if I were, which I’m not, I might also ask why you have a bird in your hand.
