Such delight as you cut a generous smile
through its fibrous belly, and serve heaps
of dripping cubed and trapezoidal pieces.
How easily you excavate the outsized
placenta, encased in jungle-green stripes,
and how greedily the guests partake,
the usual restraint suspended, like a crowd
that gets up to dance, swinging limbs
and hips to express some ravenous
and embarrassing parts of their natures.
Sinking down through small aqueous
explosions, no one even takes a breath
while they eat, as no one observes the hue
of the actual flesh, dark pink, almost bawdy,
ripe and ready to be consumed.
Only a gourmand would breathe the rind
thick and wet, fresh as a bouquet of wind,
cucumber’s sweeter cousin, or consider
swallowing, that is, the slippery seeds
shiny as polished wood. Now the beam
of summer lowers, and a newly sliced
sliced watermelon glows on the table,
elliptic halves exposed, poised to perish.
A collective thirst kindles. They approach
like horses to a spring, under the sizzle
of barbecue and tendrils of mustard,
and hotdogs spitting grease–slowly at first
25
with a modicum of decorum, drawn by the
promise of water, then cast their plastic knives
and forks, unable to cherish, and just dig in.
