ode to clementine

The fruit of my loins is painted across my tongue,

a sticky tangerine in a fickle summer’s afternoon.

Her strings, the pith, decorate that hazy apartment.

The smell of your sap fills each dusty rooms,

a perfume more loyal than the syrupy sweat above my lips.

Soak into my skin, I beg

for plumpness as youthful as her.

Fingers clutch this orange, silk shell, oh daughter–

let us taste the transient love.

The slices slip down my gullet, staining my withering throat

with summer citrus, rotting before spilling her secrets.

How was this death kept just to a muzzled whisper,

only one gulp? Her peels do not know when

to give up their long-lasting stench of naivety.

She is meant to decompose within two years,

but I hope she quits begging

for my spit back sooner.

There was a image of her, a tawny light in our graying home,

yet here we are, at the dusk of this summer harvest.

So I bury her skin with my hunger, let us rest

with the lemon peels and sneering gnats.

I forget the days she was worshiped

in hopes that next year, in a sweeter dawn, I will find

another a fresh tangerine, sweet beyond the surface.