Appetite

Pineapple and its Absence

52 Pineapple and its Absence That poem about the pineapple, the one About the mind as never satisfied. —Wallace Stevens “As You Leave the Room” I. Do you remember the pineapple on the table, tarnished diamond scales coifed with a tuft of green, the weight of its smell pervading the room? You walked to the bay windows to open them, the windless rain specking grey light, the pineapple on the table opening the pores of its odor. Sunday evening sated in our mouths. Night invaded the room, —punctuation of traffic skimming the avenue— the movement of your shoulders turned my mind to lovemaking. II. August, imposing, only a long day’s heat, pines & tarmac oozed. In the house, we shadowed the dark. That summer, the lake had receded to a single shallow pool, its baked, marbled sides letting us see below the water line. The alacrity of our tired bodies islanded afternoons. 53 III. It was October, your leather jacket made me see your body even thinner inside and say in your language “tus senos amenudan sobre mis manos.” The streets of your clean neighborhood hushed down and we loved in revenge. IV. An after-rain drop rolling in the cupped leaf, shape of an eye curving the close immensity of the lover’s face, the fish twisting the ocean in the flicks of its tail: a metaphor, always a metaphor that chooses between here and the distant here. ...