by Luke Sawczak
Clementines from Chinese markets
sometimes have a bead or beads,
dark corpuscles,
juice but hard,
along the segments’ edges.
Life I think can get these too,
beads of breath or blood or tears
running down the spine or
hanging on the raised hairs of the arm,
tiny gems of ice on eyelashes.
That’s what they are, jewels,
but jewelled delight, or pain?
In clementines you pop them in your mouth
and let them burst, the fruit’s pure
mutated work liquefying
and becoming, if too strange for food,
at least dye for the internal tapestry.
I wonder if I lap up from you
this necklace of phase-shifted mist
will it divulge in me the slow
excruciating beauty of your making?
Luke Sawczak is a teacher and writer in Toronto. His poetry has
appeared in Sojourners, Queen’s Quarterly, the Humber Literary Review,
the Spadina Literary Review, Acta Victoriana, NorthWord, Nashwaak,
Ekstasis, and elsewhere. It has been nominated for Best of the Net and
included in Best Canadian Poetry. His creative nonfiction was a finalist
in Napoli Racconta. In his spare time he composes for the piano.
Header Image: “clementine pieces” by Muffet is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (cropped and remixed)
