Since the baby died I’ve
been trying to hold on to things:
steering wheels, wet dishes, broom handles, garden
tools,
and today it’s an apple. Is it possible to think APPLE
without division: man is to woman as snake is to fruit,
or worm in the teacher’s forbidden lesson? At the store
I’m putting fruit in a bag. APPLE in my hand
is firm,
unbroken, not like fingering myself, man-in-absentia.
APPLE is not sexual if I leave God out.
Its pride is the logic of seamless flesh, a rolling rump
righting itself if eaten to the core, slick
dark seeds, smug little promises of beginnings, a planet
in my god-like clutch, a tough heavenly body,
or edible roughage for the rough beast. I could sink
my teeth into its hard crunch, its firmness
and break-down: slices coated with sugar and cinnamon,
the thought of a family eating dessert, both pictures
provoking a process of elimination and here my thinking
goes bad like spoiled fruit, because the family
eating pie will not be. Again, failure, no firmness
here I can count on. I twist-tie the bag, keep
the wheels moving because the hardness is:
hearing a kindness when you feel rotting peels
underfoot, not knowing when trust will show
its other cheek. What I handle in cantaloupes
is suspicion, nose to the rind sniffing for sweetness,
the succulent chance of ripeness. And I will
write
this poem again because my baby’s death
lives in my mouth, like teeth, like tongue, like APPLE.
Copyright © 1999
Anne Doolittle
All Rights Reserved |
