Amy Kesegich
The Blob, 1958: A Prequel
She’d had enough of evolution,
so she went to the beach, unhinged her head,
and tossed her brain to the waves.
The egg wants its shell, the core its apple,
but she would have a mind of saltwater.
Bioluminescent at the bottom of the sea,
the soul of a drone, no one’s home,
the soggy bobber just keeps bobbing along.
Brainless, she went forth, her face an empty mask,
her eyes caverns of liquid lust.
She met another, also free, a glistening mound
of unwound wits, slack-jawed and hungry,
hanging from a tree. They shook their souls
in silent reverie, molted and homeless to the bone.
A gelatinous mass, husband and wife,
they pulsated radiant for many light years.
Finally, freshness faltered, languid love limped.
So, the solemn dollop splashed through space,
and landed in a lump on earth.
They softened spines to join them
in their cosmic pseudopod.
Too bent on benevolence to note the omens,
the great-hearted glob merged too much.
Before they could gather their guts,
earthly ingrates glazed them in place,
a frozen stone of failed fellowship.
Amy Kesegich, Ph.D., teaches English at Lake Erie College. She has published poetry in Whiskey Island Magazine, California Quarterly, Frost Notes, Poetry Motel, White Pelican Review, Rubbertop Review, Blue Mountain Review, Poetography, The Comstock Review, and The Connecticut River Review. She has a chapbook, Spare Change, published by Bits Press. Her manuscript, The House Witch, was a finalist for the 2024 St. Lawrence Book Award, and she received Honorable Mention in the 2024 Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Some Complaints About Time, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2026. She lives in Fairport Harbor, Ohio.
Banner Art:
Dolphin Nebula in the constellation of Canis Majoris, Scott Lord, Unsplash, 2023
