Be Specific

Don’t say fruit.
Things have names,
like people. Say
Eric held a piece
of fruit that we
named pomegranate.
Say we kissed.
And time
with him became
a grenade we held
and loved inside
like two filthy
red seeds bound
by tough skin.
Say I spat
pomegranate hurt
as we tore apart
the rind, separated
white pulp,
abandoned seeds
to taste. To be
specific: I split
a pomegranate
with Eric and ate
all the seeds
as he stood by,
not wanting
anything
except to watch
as my lips turned
the color of blood.









Francine Conley is a poet, performer, and artist. She has a chapbook, How Dumb the Stars (Parallel Press, 2000), and has written and produced eight one-woman multimedia shows, including the most recent: “I Swear I Can Fly” (2010). Published poems have appeared in journals such as Harpur Palate, Ginko Tree Review, Paris/Atlantic, among others. A recent MFA graduate of the Warren Wilson Creative Writing program, she currently resides in Minnesota where she teaches in International Languages & Literatures at Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul.

See more of her work in Issue 2.4.