The Souring
Eight white chunks begin to self-brown
showing the poison you fed me inside you
to stave off your craving for cooking apples.
Even after I was born you left me the cores,
coaching the nuances of tart and crumble
so well I made a verb of both.
I was a slug in you, wracking
from salt put down, your bruise
coming out, your bad touched side,
trailing your path all these years.
Until now, plumped myself
with the pulse of mother morse
and other noise:
secrets and warnings,
echoes of my own feet?
or reply in my belly of your sweet
grandchild’s kicking its turn against
old truths, listen, listen, it is saying,
you do not have to carry on, yours
will not have to be made mine.
Or is it your look that beats loudest,
that I will always hear, your bitter surprise
at my abstinence, at my refusal to do
as you have done?
Page(s) 33
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