GloPoWriMo 2020 Day 24: Pomegranate Love

Prompt: Today’s prompt is a fairly simple one: to write about a particular fruit – your choice. But I’d like you to describe this fruit as closely as possible. Perhaps your poem could attempt to tell the reader some (or all!) of the following about your chosen fruit: What does it look like, how does it feel, how does it smell, what does it taste like, where did you find it, do you need to thump it to know if it’s ripe, how do you get into it (peeling, a knife, your teeth), do you need to spit out the seeds, should you bake it, can you make jam with it, do you have to fight the birds for it, when is it available, do you need a ladder to pick it, what is your favorite memory of eating it, if you threw it at someone’s head would it splatter them or knock them out, is it expensive . . . As you may have realized from this list, there’s honestly an awful lot you can write about a fruit!


As much as I've been wanting to write the last few days, life has gotten in the way with a vengeance - and with it the discouragement that comes with being so behind there's no earthly way of catching up. However, today's prompt reminded me of something I wrote a little while ago, so while it's technically cheating, it's still about a fruit, and it's still something up where there wasn't any five minutes ago, so even if it doesn't count, maybe it'll serve as inspiration for later, if life doesn't get in the damn way YET AGAIN...

POMEGRANATE LOVE      

My father's love is a big round pomegranate on the table after lunch.
For you, he says.

Two simple words which over forty years of troubled relations
hard work, and difficult love have polished to burnished gold sheen
wrapped about with the decades-old memory of a wayward daughter 

eating pomegranates in Virginia declaring that of all things 

she loved this fruit the best.

Yellow-streaked red. This pomegranate is heavy in my palm, not
quite as vivid as other pomegranates I have known but when I cut it apart
the thin red juice spurting from bruised sacs is sweet as honey.

Pale pinkish-and-red. Endothelium cells, contained by yellow membranes
thin as onion skin. Breaking them apart is like dissecting a body's secrets,
detaching each plump, ripe sac from the finger-clutch  of its yellow moorings
holding everything tight against smooth pomegranate peel
like flesh contained by its epidermis.

I stand at the sink, deseeding love that falls in tiny scarlet jewels -
pomegranate seeds, bleeding memory and the remembrance of things lost
and things gained, hope and the fear of things to come
thin pale-blood juice staining my fingers and the cutting board
with winter-sweet promise.

Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today, there are pomegranates
and my father, the kitchen god, storing up scents and conversation
like ribbons to tie around the next pomegranate
the next memento of unspoken love.