Red Delicious

       I used to eat
               her keen sight
                     and its laser
                            serrations
                surgical rotations
                            undressing
                          bone-white
                   in clockwise
                  countdown
                   around a
            prenatal core
                       its cyanide
                                 unborn
                          this unsung
                       artist carving 
                        her curving
                       relief as if
              by a craving
            of curvature
                 itself for
            conclusion:
                       or else
                            of some
                                rondure
                                   so sheer                                              
                                 as to molt
                                    its skin
                                of matter
                           turn after
                             turn on
                   the unseen                              
               potter’s lathe
               of unmaking:
                thumb-spun
                 by a suddenly
                       unknowable Eve
                           who might soon
                                          no longer
                                            deign to
                                           receive
                                    the name
                                  Mother

Related Poems

Farmers Market

I go early to hear the citrus tales of pomelos and satsumas in
January, discuss the snap with favas in May, have a word with
a merchant without saying anything, hold a coin bag in one hand
and with the other chat with an unsuspecting tomato. Market
speak is the language of being a girl walking with my mother
down narrow lanes in the mercado, sweat streaming brow, dogs
impatient weaving between legs, stealthy robbers articulating
sneak, sellers shouting incantations to buy this cure-all remedy
and for a bargain, una mano, all the fruit that can fit in the palm
of your hand. At every turn my local farmers market betrays
the one I long for. The mercado I search lives dormant, rhyming
festive and mom, inside my heart.

Einstein’s Mother

Was he mute a while,
or all tears. Did he raise
his hands to his ears so
he could scream scream
scream. Did he eat only
with his fists. Did he eat
as if something inside of him
would never be fed. Did he
arch his back and hammer
his heels into the floor
the minute there was
something he sought.
And did you feel yourself
caught there, wanting
to let go, to run, to
be called back to wherever
your two tangled souls
had sprung from. Did you ever
feel as though something
were rising up inside you.
A fire-white ghost. Did you
feel pity. And for whom.