August 09, 2017

The Small Pod

(c) August 9, 2017



Vanilla notes in biscotti,
on my cologne-spritzed wrist, lathered lotion,
the bedroom and the kitchen of memory where I beat
eggs and butter into cookies, always tripling
the quarter teaspoon of amber, yes.
Vanilla notes are lush, are every boy
I longed to kiss, every unrequited, every forbidden
love punished. The spilt blood of Princess Xanat,
beheaded in the forest, becoming the tropical orchid.  
Yes, to the black shriveled fruit, the little pod.
Yes to the intensive labor, the root and leaf rot,
the harvesting that has no set season, that never ends.
And the tart shot of a blushed apple plucked
one from a hundred in their unified rush to ripe
it is the pragmatic boy too clean, to common,
and still good to taste. Yes, to the resisted lemon.
And yes, to lilac which cannot be distilled.
It grows in the backyard memory, a wild
thirty heady days each summer. Yes to cheap imitations
to deodorant and candle, yes to botanists,
to planters and thieves.
Rain water and freshly mowed grass,
a single rose without thorns, yes, vulva,
a door opening. An opening door.  

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