Bridget Kriner

On Aftertaste

Another word for specious present is now. And then,
as soon as I know it’s now, time passed. Like when I put
the kettle on for mere minutes. Another word for past
is finished. Later, I come back to find it empty.
Water slipped into vapor. Mineral buildup over time
is called limescale. Makes the tea metallic. Like sucking
on a coin. Say, a nickel. Though, if you have a discerning
palette, a nickel tastes different than a penny does.
Or did. Present tense is different from past tense.
Tense is another word for time, like the way words
tell time, express distinctions of when. They don’t always
agree. And then, a reader gets thrown off.  But seriously,
a penny in a kid’s mouth today is not the same as one
I once fished from a fountain. That was so long ago, when
pennies were minted from solid copper. If the kettle I burnt
were made of copper, my mistake would worse. See,
some things are just reactive. The world always conflates
moon & mother. When it comes to the moon, blue
is another word for rare. Blood tastes like copper, like
rusted iron, another ingredient in blood. Another word
for blood moon is eclipse. Atmosphere is another way
to say air. Apollo astronauts said the moon tasted like
spent gunpowder, like a firecracker detonated, like moondust
was all of a sudden a taste. It was a temporary reaction. Turned
into another nostalgia they could not hold. Another word
for moonlight is sunlight, which is another word for day-
time. The confusion comes out due to monthly blood,
menses. Another word for menses is month. Some words
share a common past, like moon & mother. Her blood
steeps life into being. Then later, saves that penny,
yanks it from my mouth, but the bitter survives
to this day or until now.

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Bridget Kriner is a community college professor in English and Women’s & Gender Studies in Cleveland Ohio. Her recent work has appeared in Rattle (Poets Respond), Variant Literary, Shelia-Na-Gig, Thimble Literary Magazine and Split This Rock, where she won First Place in the Abortion Rights Poetry Contest in 2012.