Fruit Juice

By ANNABELLE FULLER

you make my mouth water as if I’ve crushed a

cantaloupe or clementine

or other yielding fruit between my teeth ,

or like a pomegranate split -

so many seeds that it’s chaotic .

my jaw asphyxiates some small satsuma segments .

sticky . glossy .

the movement’s more erratic than erotic .

if I could shave the rind and smoke it

in arresting zesty Rizlas then I would ;

I find a nectarine sufficiently narcotic .

turn my attention to a tangerine .

I peel them without thinking .

pull into pieces , panic about the pips

within the syrup that I’m drinking .

my portioning’s perfunctory , robotic .

I’ve dwelt upon you more than a strawberry has pores .

I feel the need to count them : this is noxious and neurotic .

a kumquat squats within my fist ,

nesting in the folds of flesh .

I hold it and I press

until it ruptures with the slaver of a waterfall

that ramifies and roars - exotic .

dates and raisins languish - more prudish than a prune ,

ambiguous and anguished

as a summer afternoon .

their dream is to be eaten ;

I quail when I see them, so quenchless and quixotic .

you’ve made me whine and wince ,

cry and cringe like a crippled quince .

each of my eyes seems teardrop-dyed,

a terracotta-stung sclerotic.

I wail with mouth agape ,

fit to embrace unbitten grapes .

though my tongue might shun the punnets ,

all those lovely little lung-like bunches

prepped to be popped / to penetrate .

my heart’s been hewn to a pear’s unseemly shape ,

far from idyllic -

warped , distorted , idiotic .

time to pluck a lime . the hand that wields the knife is mine ,

a pendulum dividing pith and pulp :

I mesmerise .

the violent slicing of each vesicle’s hypnotic . I let the citric liquid loose

till my fingers glitter with bitterness like I’m sweating lemon juice . it rules the kingdom of my skin , severe , despotic . you make my eyes water as if a plum’s been pulverised upon my skull . could coalesce with my saliva ; symbiotic .