Golden Shovel Sonnet with Excess

 

after Momina Mela

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A famous YouTube minimalist laboriously peels labels off her condiment jars. My

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utter disbelief at her commitment to blankness. Gargling language in my throat

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for days before I expel it in swollen tides, I wonder how it would feel, to be infected

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with the less-ness of life, to excise excess with such precision, to be bewitched by

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austerity. One of minimalism’s expressed purposes is the simplification of living, the

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surfeit of time that surely must appear when you own fewer things. My thick-tongued

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addiction to sentences betrays my own volubility, how I gleefully shatter each promise

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of less I make to myself, gorge myself on names and beloved sounds and objects, each

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word bursting with the more it could be: hasrat, bewilder, pelvis, decompose. How each night

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would appear smaller if spent scrubbing sticky adhesive off glass, those records diluted

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to cavity. How would I check expiry dates? Would I know when pickles lapse into

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something vile, vinegar defiling the mango carcasses—would I have to rely only on its

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stench, on my rancid tongue, on the opening knowledge of my body, sense that exists prior

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to self. Or maybe, I will eat something rotten, at last, and have no words—only a full belly.

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