Amaretto
by and published in Edition Six of Pomegranate
It’s bottled in amber marshes, almond
sweet on my tongue, depositing sugar
in my throat, here; sanding my words down,
softening. There are cherries in my palm:
I could crush the pits. Ferment the flesh. Add.
Shake. Stopper. Watch the fruit drown, and settle
into maraschino; the redness blanch.
Then see the rain salting the branches and
think back to midnight, a tall field. I
was sour; choleric under the bridal
moon: so stiff, white, round – and baring my edges – simmering into the dark – stoking a
tempest – as the trees observed us, black in
their sternness, and monumental through their
roots, respiring for me. I listened to
the long stalks prickling gently as they bowed.
And I discovered, too, how in warm night
air, grass can smell like marzipan – the
very essence of amaretto. I
could feel your hands, your breath – but I was wound
up in on myself – like a spool of thread – which you tried to follow through the mire
and it chose, instead, to sever and shred
and I waved at you from inside the glass.
Annabella Massey
Annabella Massey was one of the commended poets for the 2006 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, and on the final shortlist for the Christopher Tower Poetry Competition 2007. She has poems forthcoming in the next Tower Poetry anthology. She is twenty-one years old, and currently in her second year reading English Literature and Creative Writing at Warwick University.