Almost Making Love
It’s morning, 10 AM. I’m awake.
My husband offers me a tangelo.
He’s snipped its skin, stripped it,
peeled it until the firm juicy flesh,
its thin white veins bare, piece by
piece, he slipped in my mouth,
ripe on my tongue, the tart sweet
taste of it like the sweat of his neck:
tiny beads of it blossoms in my throat.
Bruce Spang, former Poet Laureate of Portland, is the author of three novels, The River Crossed, The Deception of the Thrush and Those Close Beside Me. His most recent collection of poems, It Goes like This (published 2025), was just published. He’s also published four other books of poems, including All You’ll Derive: A Caregiver’s Journey ,To the Promised Land Grocery and Boy at the Screen Door (Moon Pie Press) along with several anthologies and several chapbooks. He is the poetry and fiction editor of the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. His poems have been published in Connecticut River Review, Puckerbrush Review, Red Rover Magazine, Great Smokies Review, Kalopsia Literary Journal, Café Review and other journals across the United States. He teaches courses in fiction and poetry at Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina in Asheville and lives in Candler, NC with his husband Myles Rightmire and their three dogs, five fish, and twenty birds.
It’s morning, 10 AM. I’m awake.
My husband offers me a tangelo.
He’s snipped its skin, stripped it,
peeled it until the firm juicy flesh,
its thin white veins bare, piece by
piece, he slipped in my mouth,
ripe on my tongue, the tart sweet
taste of it like the sweat of his neck:
tiny beads of it blossoms in my throat.
Bruce Spang, former Poet Laureate of Portland, is the author of three novels, The River Crossed, The Deception of the Thrush and Those Close Beside Me. His most recent collection of poems, It Goes like This (published 2025), was just published. He’s also published four other books of poems, including All You’ll Derive: A Caregiver’s Journey ,To the Promised Land Grocery and Boy at the Screen Door (Moon Pie Press) along with several anthologies and several chapbooks. He is the poetry and fiction editor of the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. His poems have been published in Connecticut River Review, Puckerbrush Review, Red Rover Magazine, Great Smokies Review, Kalopsia Literary Journal, Café Review and other journals across the United States. He teaches courses in fiction and poetry at Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina in Asheville and lives in Candler, NC with his husband Myles Rightmire and their three dogs, five fish, and twenty birds.
