Poetry: The First Fruit Salad

Have I men­tioned how much I love hav­ing good poet­ry just appear in my email and LJ feeds each day? It is soul-sustaining.

The First Fruit Salad
by Joanne Limburg
from femenis­mo

One June night
she left her hus­band sleeping
in the record-break­ing heat
and went down to ask the fridge
what it was she wanted.

What she want­ed was:
the life of a fruiteater,
an end­less afternoon
in a cool and juicy place
where white teeth sank into Span­ish oranges
and apples fell open into per­fect halves
on wood­en chopping-boards,
all by them­selves, all day,
and cubes of watermelon
clinked in long glasses.

Splay-legged on the kitchen floor,
she hugged the bowl of fruit salad
to her chest, and remem­bered how,
at the very beginning,
Eve sat, blind­fold and giggling,
as he brought the spoon­fuls up to her mouth,
one by one,
to be named.