The Third Tangerine It was nothing I could put my finger on Which made it worse But didn’t shake my certainty The sea, I told myself, Doesn’t need to justify a wave We lunched Wordlessly on the shore The gulls called out Occasionally a breeze disturbed the sand I kept my as-if eyes ahead Searching the horizon for a sign No matter how the clouds congealed Or dissipated in the distance My tongue was cloven When she passed the tangerine – Our third – I took a mortifying age to peel it The small segmented globe Sat in the palm of my right hand Like the kind of sponge-ball I used to pitch I thought about those days Of earnest trickery and boredom Before the world got complicated – When all I needed was to throw A strike against the wall, To fool the batter with a curve And nick the corner of the plate We’d drawn in chalk – And everything depended on the outcome Of a game on summer nights The only one in sight Saw that I had crushed The fruit before I felt The juice She kept her peace and Spared me Explanations ________________________________________________________________________ Emanuel E. García, Wandering Bark, 2013 |