Fig Cartography

How to begin this? There’s a dead wasp

in the depths of every fig you’ve ever eaten.

These days, I’m trying not to take everything

as metaphor, but still. It’s the audacity I find

hard to bear. My friend considers every fig

an erotic revelation—sends me photographs

of splayed red flesh and through her eyes

I am there. Something already drenched

and begging for ravage. This is what desire does.

It makes an obscenity of the earth. And I think

I can never tell her, never risk the ruin. Who

am I to lodge a seed of venom and exoskeleton?

And then I think: she knows, of course

she already knows. It is so easy to love something

with a secret wasp heart. I don’t know why

we love like this, except to say: you felt it too,

didn’t you? First you shirk and then you lean

closer, longing for sweetness, but better than that,

longing for the crunch of legs between your teeth.

Jane Flett

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Japanese sweet potatoes

Karaage drums