THE TOMATO

by Mary Quade

 

 

A Retelling

The forbidden—a tomato,
                                              arousing
its vine.
              Sin abides
in tendrils—
                      no need for a snake,
for the fork
                    in a tongue. She
takes her teeth
                          to its skin.

Knowledge isn’t crisp;
                                        it succumbs
to her searching.
                             No need for
metaphor—
                     all flesh and seed.


Pomodori

The ecstasy of green kindling
to red—
              this crisis. The sweetness
only serves to deepen
                                       the tart bite.
Your kiss,
                  a lost taste;
the sheets cool.
                           When you leave,
I eat only tomatoes—
                                      brighter than hearts,
wounds rubbed in salt.
                                         Each one holds
a day that has ripened into night.


The Seedman

Someone must resist so that we may plant.

His plot, most pure,

a passionless bed. The flowers keep

to their kind. He culls.

The platonic fruit—pulped and dried.


Hornworm

I know           it has taken
by what           is missing
by what           it has left behind.
Envious           as a finger—it craves
and craves.           How does it get here,
on the delicate           hairs of
the newest           growth—a thing heavy
with creeping?           I must have
conjured it, like           sickness,
imagining its           thick grasping,
its spineless           inside
maturing           to burst.


Indeterminate

Some use cages,
but I like a stake,
driven deep.
Still, it won’t climb;
you have to tie it up,
to train it.
It doesn’t know
what it wants,
or what it wants
is to not know.


Open-faced Sandwich

Crush the leaves while pulling
the fruit
              and the scent is knives
and pepper—sharp enough
to slice through suppleness.

The bread should be
                                     willing
to accept what is given it, to not
fall apart.
                  And you—

set aside your clean plate.
                                               Lean
over the sink,
                        drip—bliss—
into the drain.


The Myth of Poison

Crimson crepusculum—not quite
consummate—like the limbo of
laudanum, of strychnine’s sleep.
The skull yawns
over bones. A dream rattles
inside you. Your eyes
roll beneath their lids.


Peak Harvest

I cut out the cores,
the soft spots.
                         The best—
ugly, slipping
towards rot—
                        a collapse.
What beckoning,

a brimming body
languishing in the sun.


Preserved

I pluck.
              The plants—
not yielding—
                          they offer willingly,
globes warm in my palms.
                                               Every thing tires
of burdens,
                    of what it creates.
In boiling water,
                             the skins split, release.
Jars seal, each a
carmine memory, secrets
shelved in the cellar,
                                     waiting
for hunger
when the world grows cold.

 

 

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