COUNTERPART

Gather your corn cockle and doll’s eyes,
the apple orchard’s angry.

She shoots her black seeds
down your throat,
eyes pierced through skin
to watch your veins suffocate.

I met her in September
when she was frail – my mistake –
I never knew of her spines, thorns,
and thistles.

But you knew everything of her:
her laughter,
her sentiment,
her tears….
and she hid in her orchard watching

the way I would swing from your branches;

how you picked fruit ripe from my body,

how every night you crossed midnight
twisted in my edible, red
nightshade

while her delicious Golden
nectar kept well
for the worms.

I Will, I Will Do Now

My head, my long head burns
in fury as my teeth expand. I can taste gun powder.
It is only what I knew,
not what I begin to know now.

I can become a tomato, only when
I become a tomato.
I am not whole, or ripe,
or sweet, red flesh,
until then.

I will only be a youthful green seed, now.

And what will I do with myself?
I have let fat, green worms slither
around my precious skin.
I have laid root in rocky, dry soil.
I have hidden my aching vines from
sunlight,
and that was all then.

Now, my face pulsates as I grind
my teeth on old leather,
fighting expansion,
embracing the tension,

and I will, I will do with my sweet,
ripe fruit what I know now.

Statue

I am laying in wet cement, gray
mud
blanket gobbling up my plague.
It is thick like me,
like the twenty years of
plaster inside.

Everything is hardening.
Kidney.
Liver.
Fallopian Tubes.
Guts.
Heart.

I have been treated like a statue.
It isn’t hard to
be still,
motionless. Erect.
Allowing curious wanderers to
make up my background,
my story.

A man brought oranges
to paint
me with. He was a soft liquid.
I was set to stone.
He sliced his moist fruit,
dripping
sweet citrus over my rough skin, melting
my rind.

Away, away I went with delicate fruit.
A new sculpture.
A beautiful, fluid seed.