Image: ‘perfectly sugared and glazed crabapple’ © paul+photos=moody. Source
Author: Anonymous
India pale ale
Third-place winner of the poetry competition
Were hectic bitter undertones of a first swig
steadying for the exclamation that our four
feet would trip through an all-nighter and
your former swarm?
Foam swirled into complete ego burial or
the censure of any comparisons stuck on
under chins like unsolicited spittle. One
spewed as fruit flies drowned in drink rings,
plucked, sponged, wiped
away by bartenders with the promise of a
blithe night, so to relinquish limerence was the
embrace of scarce sweet nothings as I secured
hair you once adulated from streams of bile and
the sticky grips of duplicitous people. Outside,
our collective reeling did not wane with the ease
of moons, yet we were tethered to your unrestrained
insistence it would pass. Just as one announces that
all the pigeons are vanishing from town tomorrow.
§
§
To come to a crabapple’s aid
Tannic throughout, the orchard’s
horse marine, a tart fruit scattered
across threadbare canvases of
eroded soil can be saved from
composting neglect in the shrubbery’s
shade. Chopped, it froths and slushes
above warm pans, strained for juice
then boiled into jelly. Perhaps that
seemingly unpalatable character
waits upon a baker’s time with the
heat of stovetop endeavors, before
revealing their sweet ambrosia.