What My Friend Says When She Gives Me a Persimmon

It tastes like your first kiss, 
but you have to let it ripen
until you almost think it's too late,
the beautiful bright body spoiled.
That's when it's best, that's when you open up
the flesh, that's when you want to 
lay it on your tongue and savor it,
not really like your first kiss but more like 
oral sex, though I wouldn't say that
in public. I couldn't eat one
with a stranger with so much 
private hunger going on.

From Private Hunger, The University of Akron Press, copyright © 2002 by Melody Lacina. Reprinted by permission of the University of Akron Press. All rights reserved.