The Beach Hawker
He rarely eats
the fruit he sells,
preferring instead the skin.
The shiny wax that covets the apple
the singular greens of shapely pears,
and how bananas spoon each other
to brown the peel, freckle.
In youth a lover took him in
and made him gifts
of fat black grapes and sugary limes,
raised on fine white tissue.
And where she touched
left stains of light, the like of which
he could not bear; for love could not remove.
So that now,
when comparing peach with apricot
(as he often does on his rounds) -
he nearly always
plumps on the side of the latter.
Regards the drying fibres sweetly
approves in time their soft defeat.
The hawker sits
on his splintered crate, to eye
the seedling ships.The beach is empty
in noonday sun and familiar trickles
of icy fruit seep their way down peeling thighs.
He weights his feet in snow, in sand,
bathes thinning flesh, reflects.
Page(s) 9
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