Potently deranged when I take the moment to taste

Tropically borne into the Southside

You tell me if I was a fruit I’d be a pear

Because they are juicy and quiet

Versatile vagrant, I didn’t ask for this mouth breathing

I don’t understand this range and have to Google it

I am more like an Asian pear

They grow vascular in Virginia

We are two tropic distinctions

For one, you like the summer

Like an equatorial emission

I feel inferior to you when you talk about being wetter

Hotter because of the sun directly overhead

You asked if I’ve ever made love to the sound

Of moaning Mona monkeys

No, I don’t think I have but i’ve fallen

In a grassy field where the cicadas vibrate

Maybe I’ve even shared a kiss or a half tongue

I find your strange city heat trop

Sounds like sensuality and skin

The sweat above my lip from walking

Away from the boy on the porch asking for me to walk by again

I am shy and you grow in the most sweltering position

Tamarindo, I gave you the name wrapped in a whisper

I wonder what you want to do

It is not like I am the most fragrant: a mist

A dew or skin, I am unsure which flavor a pear finds itself

But you want

me still in my uncertainty

My mild taste and mess that dribbles

And you, I stay solid in my bulbous and you

Still shapeshift and I wait for your new texture

Do you hear the crickets and the frogs tonight

Your catered lullaby

I’ve never been somewhere so alive

Virginia sleeps at 9:30 pm

No wonder the trees know

What they’re talking about as you glide there

And feed the valiance of your memory

And I inhale the aftermath and sharpen

Featured

Briel Felton

Briel Felton was born and raised in sweet, sweet Virginia along the coast of the Chesapeake Bay, in the cultural Hub of the 757 —where she says some of her first teachers pounded the pavement, hung out at the corner store, asked for money while pumping gas, or played endless rounds of basketball. Briel has a BA in English, concentration in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University; she is currently an MFA candidate at Cornell University. Her work has appeared in Laurel Moon Magazine (Brandeis University) and Rigorous Magazine.

english.cornell.edu/briel-felton

Featured

Poem-a-Day Virginia

In celebration of National Poetry Month in April, Virginia Poet Laureate Luisa A. Igloria presents a poem a day from Virginia poets.

See all poems

TAMARIND