Mollusk Stamps of the World

The first time he saw Botticelli at the Uffizi,

it was the half-shell that made him salivate.

He’d always had strange loves: tidal pools,

hermit crabs from the midway, oversized stamp albums.

He skipped keggers to enumerate the nautilus’s

chambers, measure regeneration in severed starfish limbs.

His decade of Baltic postage book swelled

in damp sea air as he lugged it to the shore.

In a villa soaked in Tyrian purple, the postage

on a letter from home: a giant squid embracing

a sunk schooner in a tangle of tentacles, the cancellation

obscuring one inky eye: he had discovered

philatelic conchology. While looking for a bathroom,

I stumble into his life’s work: an ill-lit

display case tucked behind the hall of North American

Forests. The pastel hues of stamp art shade snails,

an octopus, clams and whelks miniature

and enormous, craggy outer shells split

to the viewer to reveal a pink deeply enticing,

a shimmer of nacre. This deep attention to the dull

is a kind of mania. Attempt explanation and facts

froth from the mouth. The eye gleams too wetly.

So let me stand mute before “The Mollusk Stamps of the World,”

awed by oddity and oddity’s household gods.

Melissa Ahart

 keggers: student parties