Barren
Melanie Graham (Lancaster University, England)
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While we picked up and put down keys, phones, mail,
and plums swelled, burst, bled across the table,
the pineapple rotted, unnoticed. Pale
squat body, each craven notch disabled
by mold, the once blooming crown,
stiff aborigine headdress, dried plume’s
memory of green carried close, put down.
Ashamed of the waste, I dared to consume
a slice, shocked by the juice, the obscene sweet
sticky bracelet, tracing my wrist to bend,
where elbow’s hint of vein and lips might meet.
Offered a dripping piece, hand extended
to my husband, not surprised by his face;
bored countenance, predictable distaste.
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Melanie Graham is a second year PhD candidate at the University of Lancaster UK and is working on a creative dissertation concerning violence and women. Her poems have appeared most recently in Harvard Summer Review, sweet: a literary confection, Cake, and The Southern Quarterly.
