Food for Talk
after a postcard showing Cezanne’s Still Life with Glass, Fruit, and a Knife
Visitor, what can I offer you
as nourishment after your journey?
Which fruit’s perfect sweetness
will quicken your blood, make you eager
to talk? It has been too long
since we’ve embraced, sat in soft chairs
side by side near a fire,
spoken of what gives us joy.
Here—drink the wine. Eat these
ripe pears. Let spill
every secret you know.
Gone Bananas
There are worse places to go.
At least the banana
is cradled in a peel
like a body in a hammock
or a baby in a sling
draped around its mother’s shoulder.
She carries her burden
with love, not unlike
the crisp-suited worker
who cradles his banana
in his hand as he walks
to his favorite lunch bench,
careful as he pulls back
the thick yellow skin
not to leave a smudge
on trouser or sleeve.
No, it could be worse--
the pineapple, whose sweetness
is guarded by a hundred
stiff spikes. Who wants
to hold you, ironic symbol
of hospitality? No,
you must be peeled and gutted
and sliced, your naked tenderness
on display for all to see
for anyone to love you.
Too much of your sharp self
to lose. Or how about
the humble coconut,
giant green football
of a fruit, or instead
a softball sheathed in fur,
the sort of thing a harvester
needs cleaver or machete
to open, drink the milk,
shave the fruit. So much trouble.
No, bananas have it best.
Ask our cousin, the gorilla,
who sits quiet in the jungle
for the moment it takes
to pinch the blossom end,
peel away the bitter sheath,
and gnaw the sweet fruit,
a thing she does with gusto,
a thing that makes her sing
a melody soft as raindrops
on the wide leaves above her,
dripping downward, an anointing.
The Persimmon
a friend brought me
across five state lines
from the tree in her mother’s yard
had almost no flavor,
but something about its color--
orange as a setting sun--
and the softness of its flesh
and the sweetness of its juices
and the kindness of my friend
to think of me and carry
this extraordinary fruit
all the way from a state
I’ve never set foot in
somehow made this morning,
wrapped in January’s darkness,
shimmer in the kitchen’s
incandescent light, like
the wetness on my cheeks and chin
that I relished for a moment
before lifting a napkin
to wipe the glow away.
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies, recently including The Hollins Critic, Pirene’s Fountain, and Crosswinds Poetry Journal. She is the author of A Dangerous Heaven (2023, Gnashing Teeth Publishing) and the chapbooks Bitten (forthcoming 2024, dancing girl press) and Play (2016, Finishing Line Press). She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. She lives in Florence, SC, and serves as poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.
after a postcard showing Cezanne’s Still Life with Glass, Fruit, and a Knife
Visitor, what can I offer you
as nourishment after your journey?
Which fruit’s perfect sweetness
will quicken your blood, make you eager
to talk? It has been too long
since we’ve embraced, sat in soft chairs
side by side near a fire,
spoken of what gives us joy.
Here—drink the wine. Eat these
ripe pears. Let spill
every secret you know.
Gone Bananas
There are worse places to go.
At least the banana
is cradled in a peel
like a body in a hammock
or a baby in a sling
draped around its mother’s shoulder.
She carries her burden
with love, not unlike
the crisp-suited worker
who cradles his banana
in his hand as he walks
to his favorite lunch bench,
careful as he pulls back
the thick yellow skin
not to leave a smudge
on trouser or sleeve.
No, it could be worse--
the pineapple, whose sweetness
is guarded by a hundred
stiff spikes. Who wants
to hold you, ironic symbol
of hospitality? No,
you must be peeled and gutted
and sliced, your naked tenderness
on display for all to see
for anyone to love you.
Too much of your sharp self
to lose. Or how about
the humble coconut,
giant green football
of a fruit, or instead
a softball sheathed in fur,
the sort of thing a harvester
needs cleaver or machete
to open, drink the milk,
shave the fruit. So much trouble.
No, bananas have it best.
Ask our cousin, the gorilla,
who sits quiet in the jungle
for the moment it takes
to pinch the blossom end,
peel away the bitter sheath,
and gnaw the sweet fruit,
a thing she does with gusto,
a thing that makes her sing
a melody soft as raindrops
on the wide leaves above her,
dripping downward, an anointing.
The Persimmon
a friend brought me
across five state lines
from the tree in her mother’s yard
had almost no flavor,
but something about its color--
orange as a setting sun--
and the softness of its flesh
and the sweetness of its juices
and the kindness of my friend
to think of me and carry
this extraordinary fruit
all the way from a state
I’ve never set foot in
somehow made this morning,
wrapped in January’s darkness,
shimmer in the kitchen’s
incandescent light, like
the wetness on my cheeks and chin
that I relished for a moment
before lifting a napkin
to wipe the glow away.
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies, recently including The Hollins Critic, Pirene’s Fountain, and Crosswinds Poetry Journal. She is the author of A Dangerous Heaven (2023, Gnashing Teeth Publishing) and the chapbooks Bitten (forthcoming 2024, dancing girl press) and Play (2016, Finishing Line Press). She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. She lives in Florence, SC, and serves as poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.
