Topaz fruit resembling an old lace gourd
floats lazily along a salty green swell.
Down by a bayou filled with cold sauvignon,
serpentine women bathe in long yellow grasses.
A colorist stirs the bayou at high noon,
bubbles blink and break against the sun.
Alice blue men gather under baobab trees
and read narratives written on scrolls.
--by Mary Rogers-Grantham
I curled in the lap of a citrus grove,
floated in the summer steam
of her perfumed blossoms, and dreamed
of orange marmalade from Seville
and verbena tea with honeyed milk,
and of the impossible hour when I
will lie below her bending limbs
(or will I be bending up to them?)
and suckle her ripened fruit until I feel
the juice trickle on my drunken cheek.
--by Gregory Van Winkle
