Fruit of The Gods

Fruit of the gods

Helen Vitoria

 

you are not unlike persimmons

it’s right about this time of year you ripen

your limbs growing heavier

I picture you on the patio

listening to smooth jazz

thinking you will go out dancing tonight

where you will meet the one you will bring home

you will not tell her your real name

you will appear kind and sensitive

she will look at you and smile

I eat persimmons, peel the fleshy orange skin

from its more tender center

rake the fuzzy residue off my tongue with my teeth

even when I  reach that softer

middle it’s hard to ignore any inherited bitterness

as I swallow

 

 

Helen Vitoria lives and writes in Effort PA.  Her work can be found and is forthcoming in many journals including: elimae, PANK, Mud Luscious Press, >kill author, Poets & Artists Magazine and Dark Sky Magazine.  Her chapbook, The Sights & Sounds of Arctic Birds, is available as an e-chap from Gold Wake Press, 2011.  She has been thrice nominated for Best New Poets Anthology 2010.  She is completing her first full length collection: Corn Exchange, with an expected release Fall, 2011.  Find her here:  http://helenvitoria-lexis.blogspot.com/