Pineapple Market
by Ariana Benson
In colonial America, pineapple was served as a symbol of hospitality. In Ghana, enslaved captives used wild pineapples to mark their path to Assin Manso, the last stop before the Middle Passage.
A wild fruit best served fresh and cold,
protruding green blades slice at chained feet.
Cut deep enough, white flesh turns pure gold.
Produce wrenched from its earth-bound mold,
coarse hull scoured with bleach: wash, rinse, repeat.
A wild fruit best served fresh and cold
like skulls beheaded. Crowns tumbled and rolled,
belly skinned, rid of rind that tastes unsweet.
Cut deep enough, white flesh turns pure gold.
Sticky, wet juice runs, bloodflow uncontrolled,
brown eyes gouged. Insatiable men need not see to eat
the wild fruit best served fresh and cold.
A stripped core is all that remains to behold,
barren carcass left to rot in sweltering heat.
Cut deep enough, white flesh turns pure gold
to be loaded, bound, shipped ‘cross oceans, and sold.
Riches reaped from a resource we’ve yet to deplete:
A wild fruit best served fresh and cold.
Cut deep enough, black flesh turns to gold.
Here are 2019 judge Kamilah Aisha Moon’s remarks about “Pineapple Market” by Ariana Benson:
"Benson's work is steeped in history—particularly the costs of captivity and displacement. Her poems are crafted with a keen sense and command of form, as well as an indelible use of image and metaphor that allows us to see again what we think we know with new eyes. [This] tight, strong villanelle encompasses what [her] other poems detail—the vast and continuous pillage of black virtuosity that generations manage to miraculously survive and thrive anyway."