Appetite

Plantains

88 Plantains Contortionists at recess plantains bend their spines. Side by side on the kitchen shelf they try to keep abreast their change of colors as they mature to the mantra of their two syllables: Plan-tain, aerial cluster of vegetal ribs cradling under green-vermilion palms. Yellowing, darkening to copper amber they grow redolent, softening beneath their thick pod, buttery inside with the thin tender black line of a foreign horizon. Today, I disrobe them, one by one still hard to pull them out of themselves sugary and slimy in my hands. Clean through their flesh. the blade opens the thin star of their umbilical pistil inside— gone flower of wet earth aftertaste. Buoyant in the sizzling oil they hold up their golden effervescence browning, deepening a taste of fresh rains. I toss them, crisp and sunny, on a paper towel, salt them to the tang of their Caribbean land. ...