Semiferal Snail – Marina Trufanova

December 16, 2025

I take the lesson to heart, then I dilate like time around gravity,

little me lodged inside your iris. I am a thin and continuous

pizza man. But you don’t want pizza. When you pass through me,

you never know you’ve touched me. When I call you at night,

you only hear a faint synthesized voice confirming your order.

You think it’s some kind of joke. Contortion-love, paraphrase,

I take the lesson and make it my prisoner. Dreaming of baby frost,

of human skin spread thin over the rough coast; beautiful things,

dolphins crawl up the sand, their fins flailing like proto-arms,

their rubber skin shredded by gravel as they fail to deliver.

You want to undress their address, remove heavy magnets

from their mushy hearts and throw them into the ocean, soft tissue

closing around the wound. I am getting baptized or drowning.

Then you close your eyes, and time stops for me. Semiferal snail,

compulsion, I crawl inside your ear while you are asleep. In a pit

of your regular coma, I nurse your exhaust; I listen; I nibble

on everything you didn’t know about yourself. Your underside

is a room of portraits gnawed out of their frames. I eat faces

and leave untouched the space they’ve carved open in me.