The consistency of flesh will drive us, 
how a pome ascends the stairs 
of its origin. A boy shakes 

pears down off the higher branches
as his friends scavenge underneath, 
groping for the thin necks. 

If you find yourself holding one, 
hungry, if that’s the word,
then you are testament 

to what festers in its fattened lobe
like a ball of sugar bees.
Here is Augustine, his thin

fingers tearing into skin
that barely holds the pulp 
around its core. Poised nudes 

forever in their sunny chairs,
they await whatever plucking
comes. When they’re eaten

with darkness plunging 
always further into their hearts,
a few seeds ache then swell black 

as appetite. Or as their profile 
imitates a lover’s pendant
breasts, we take them in 

as we do our own bodies, 
as infants do, wanting anything 
to give our wanting form.


Originally appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Fall 2000