Eliot S. Ku

​Blumenkäse

On some dark day
when there is a downpour
I will invite you to my peanut butter house
stacked upon the knees
of bald cypress trees in the swamp.
You will hear me waiting for you
amidst the frogs and insects
shrieking outside my warm abode,
my melorheostotic bones
weeping like candles on the porch steps
made from the scrap wood of
drowned canoes and derelict playhouses.
And I will receive you
in my single room
lit by a jar filled with lightning bugs,
where you can shed your wet clothes,
dry off with a fresh towel,
and change
into anything you want.
Then I will share with you a wedge of my favorite cheese.
It is a riddle on the tongue
and splashed with primary colors-
cornflower, marigold, and rose-
like the war paint of rodeo clowns.
Afterward,
our bellies full,
we will lie down on the earth
matted with lost feathers
and shed snake skins
and listen to the rise and fall
of each other’s breath.
We will drift off into a starless slumber
where everything is just as wondrous,
while the lightning bugs die off
one by one.

Eliot S. Ku is a radiologist who lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children. He specializes in emergency and trauma imaging. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Raven Review, Maudlin House, Pere Ube, and Whiskey Tit.