Lemandarin

By

I crush your skin in grasps timed like heartbeats
    your leak is all things bodily: color of piss,
pressure of a slit carotid artery, sweetness
    of a woman’s seed. You don’t make us wait for
that time of the year. You’ve never known nudity.
    Because I’m getting older, I begin to care
for your possibility. How do a mandarin and a lime
    have sex? I ask the oldest woman in this house
how you grew as ours. A gift from one of Alejandro’s
    friends, dice mi abuela, he got murdered picking 
up food at Tony’s Mar, that seafood place. Lemandarin,
    did you grieve? I imagine Alfredo, your planter,
ordered pescado frito to baptize in the juice of your fruit
    from his own backyard. Had he finished his plate,
he too could’ve bathed in your lake, breathed in oil
    bubbles, floated on the bones of fish. Lemandarin,
I’m sorry it has taken me this long to ask your story.
    My country is a garden of dead men’s hands.
This is neither here nor there, but once I saw the blood
    of six men gunned down hosed out in front of
that pupusas place not too far from our house, not too
    far from where your Alfredo was killed. Tegucigalpa
is a crumpled handkerchief. Nothing’s too far. I’m trying
    to say there seems to be an understanding in this city
about murdering men as they eat. What is more
    vulnerable than biting the work of your fingers?
Lemandarin, I’m tired of my tongue pushing death
    around my mouth with every taste of you. Let’s
rind ourselves of this country and its rotting.
    Can a lemandarin and a watermelon have sex? Let’s
farm fruit orgies. Let’s seed something new.


Bessie F. Zaldívar