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Blue by Joy Sullivan (book: Instructions for Traveling West: Poems) I've taken every man I've loved out for oysters especially if he's never tried them. It's hard to explain how eating oysters isn't so much about the taste but about the memory of ocean and brine, wet crag and sputter-foam. How you lift the shell and slurp wave, sargassum, primordial star. Lungs full of froth. How you quiver like a drowned god and swallow that gulp of sea, creature made of salt and time and I am asking to be loved like that — with a taste so blue it breaks you.
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The Mango by Mary Oliver
One evening
I met the mango.
At first there were four or five of them
in a bowl.
They looked like stones you find
in the rivers of Pennsylvania
when the waters are low.
That size, and almost round.
Mossy green.
But this was a rich house, and clever too.
After salmon and salads,
mangoes for everyone appeared on blue plates,
each one cut in half and scored
and shoved forward from its rind, like an orange flower,
cubist and juicy.
When I began to eat
things happened.
All through the sweetness I heard voices,
men and women talking about something—
another country, and trouble.
It wasn’t my language, but I understood enough.
Jungles, and death. The ships
leaving the harbors, their holds
filled with mangoes.
Children, brushing the flies away
from their hot faces
as they worked in the fields.
Men, and guns.
The voices all ran together
so that I tasted them in the taste of the mango,
a sharp gravel in the flesh.
Later, in the kitchen, I saw the stones
like torn-out tongues
embedded in the honeyed centers.
They were talking among themselves—
family news,
a few lines of a song
Haiku by Lana Del Rey (book: Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass) Babe let's go to town buy something sweet — pink grapefruit eat it with sugar
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Feast by Joy Sullivan (book: Instructions for Traveling West: Poems) Fruit after fruit, Eve feasted. Lemons drenched in summer, blackberries dark with dusk. She grew watermelons as large as her sons' heads, and mothered banana trees until their bright, buttery children rested in her palm. She chased God in every taste. A bite of strawberry could send her straight to Machu Picchu. Once, after a kumquat, she found herself in New York City, where the air swarmed with noise. Eve had no words for what she witnessed. She simply swallowed and saw. Sometimes, in the future, she spotted God or perhaps something like God. Once, in a pasture in France, she stumbled upon what looked like a pale version of her maker. He was a tall man asleep in the grass. Eve searched his wrinkles for recognition. When she found none, she left him softly, sending him something pleasant to dream of. Inside Eden, Eve had been a berry. Unbruised, but unripe. Now, she was a woman barefoot at the edge of the earth. At night, she lay awake with her boys pressed like pods against her and thought: Love is the only garden worth dying in.
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Oranges by Roisin Kelly I’ll choose for myself next time who I’ll reach out and take as mine, in the way I might stand at a fruit stall having decided to ignore the apples the mangoes and the kiwis but hold my hands above a pile of oranges as if to warm my skin before a fire. Not only have I chosen oranges, but I’ll also choose which orange — I’ll test a few for firmness scrape some rind off with my fingernail so that a citrus scent will linger there all day. I won’t be happy with the first one I pick but will try different ones until I know you. How will I know you? You’ll feel warm between my palms and I’ll cup you like a handful of holy water. A vision will come to me of your exotic land: the sun you swelled under the tree you grew from. A drift of white blossoms from the orange tree will settle in my hair and I’ll know. This is how I will choose you: by feeling you smelling you, by slipping you into my coat. Maybe then I’ll climb the hill, look down on the town we live in with sunlight on my face and a miniature sun burning a hole in my pocket. Thirsty, I’ll suck the juice from it. From you. When I walk away I’ll leave behind a trail of lamp-bright rind. Source: Poetry (September 2015)
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