Monday, December 26, 2011

Small Fruit
Dec 24 2011


Small fruit
is intense,
sweet tart crisp.
Does not expend itself
in the gaudy glitz
of bigness,
showing-off.
Like a beautiful girl
who let herself go,
the ingénue
who lost her freshness,
blousy, soft
debauched.

There is the peak of perfection,
the elegant stem
and delicate blush,
redolent
and on the cusp
of ripeness.
Before corruption
worms its way in.
The apple of his eye
he cannot resist.

There is low-hanging fruit
to sate appetite,
forbidden fruit
to arouse
his desire.
Teeth, tongue, lips
breaking through the glossy skin
then rich flesh, sinking in.
To the hard nub of seed,
containing all that’s needed
for life.
The esoteric knowledge
of DNA,
that may, or may not
breed true.

A moveable feast
of small fruit.
Because less is more.
And sure to leave
him wanting.

I almost always select small fruit. It's usually more flavorful, if less gaudy:  more nuanced, concentrated, intense. I was reminded of this while reading a recent New Yorker article about apple breeding (the SweeTango, in particular). Which gave me the first 2 lines. From there, the poem pretty much wrote itself.

I'm not sure what it is about apples, but this is my second "erotic" apple poem. (The first was Red Delicious.) Although I suppose the Garden of Eden might explain things. That is, if the corrupting knowledge was sex. (After all, it may have been the dawning of self-consciousness, self-awareness. Or perhaps the questioning and resentment of God's presumed omnipotence.)  ...Although, according to the article, the Biblical apple of Adam and Eve was more likely a pomegranate than an apple!

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