by Seth Amos
I like summer for peaches,
not for humid, breezeless days.
July 28, 2019, 11:10 a.m.,
Brooklyn, I ate one.
Eating a peach requires planning
or rogue carelessness.
I ate this one over the sink,
shirtless, waiting
for the coffee to percolate.
My teeth pierced its cropped fuzz
and perfumed flesh. Juice came
like a watering mouth, dripping
down my arm and plunking
into the empty sink basin.
I held the bitten fruit,
saw its pit peeking through pulp—
a prisoner for my mouth to set free.
I turned its slimy secrets
in my fingers before sucking
the stringy tethers clean.
Another waits in the bowl.
My fingers are sticky with this one,
while my mouth craves its favorite work.
Seth Amos is cofounder and former poetry editor of Rivet: The Journal of Writing That Risks. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Tin House, The Fourth River, Poetry Flash, Talisman, and others.
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