Eating Orange
You have eaten oranges the same way
at thirteen you would peel segment then
strip away removing every string of pith
and the bare fruit on the arm of the chair
lined just so - curve behind curve behind
curve. By seventeen - a wicked age
you'd take the biggest kitchen knife
cutting exactly those great rolling juice
balloons. You'd suck and tear at those
rip out the flesh, til inside out, picked
clean skins like old bra cups
lay hollow and immodest by you.
Now you don't eat oranges, they're
too large. All that excessive juice!
You don't enjoy spray in your throat
how your mouth corners sting - though
unbuttoned you might allow yourself
the odd, unassuming satsuma.
Alison Dunne
(this poem was broadcast on Poetry Please and appeared on a National Poetry day postcard for Leicestershire Libraries.)
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