Plums
by and published in Edition Five of Pomegranate
i remember when you took plums from your lunchbox,
the bitter skin with that translucent grain, like grimy
windows, pinched them between haughty fingers and
dug in teeth first, gone in two bites,
but then the time spent carving the sweet flesh
from between the welts of pit
and after, the way your lips would look, positively obscene
or sometimes a pear, where you’d
nip off the stalk and then guzzle
knob first, until the whole
sinful shape was gone but for the heart-
like your father and your grandfather before you.
i’ve never seen you confronted with peach
a ripened in a dusky continental orchard
with a voluptuous asymmetry, a ginger faded fuzz,
but i do imagine that you would eat it as i do,
by pressing both flattened thumbs into the sweet-smelling crevice
and feeling it split, then, with each half weighing on sticky palms,
eat them upturned like an oyster.
Mengya Du
Mengya is 18, lives in the slightly dodgy part of the very gorgeous city of Durham, enjoys arguments and lairy nights out. She was also a foylester in 2008 and despite what others might think, does not play the cello.