---

Shells get the best names

is there a person museumed in a room

who scrabbles up derelict dictionaries

heaping words like a picking cichlid

                          atlantic tiger lucina queen quahog

                          hundred-eyed cowry pāua

tooling syllables to fettled flamboyance

ready for the next discovery

or do they grow sloped and

slow mouthed from a sticky mantle

                          tent olive heart cockle

                          zigzag venus

crusted-up monikers

mudlarked from an estuary

and hoarded so the unboned

body has time to fill them out

with eggs or venom or feathered

membranes that need protecting

                           precious wentletrap miraculous

                          diplomat lazarus jewel box

and why must some be kept alone

only spoken of in chambers

where ghosts of oceans

current against my ear

sliding seasick over

its curved inner surfaces

                            sunburst star turban arabic bubble

                           ventral harp fly-specked moon snail

polished to nonsense and

worn around my neck as a reminder

I want to grow a shell

just so I can name it.

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Stevie Reeves is a trumpet playing poet interested in things musical, mechanical and transatlantic. Her poems have been published by Shoreham Wordfest and Walton Film Festival, and others commended in Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition. She was runner up in Prole Pamphlet Competition.