The Judgment Tale

Over the growing shadows fell the dead weight of  light.

With a long bark mules metered the distance and turned back.

Dust rose like columns of unpaid debt.

Spit dried before it could reach the ground.

Then the thin-barked orange trees disowned their thick-skinned fruit.

Then mosquitoes spat out bad blood into the gutters and were gone.

Fish was opened like a two-page book,

its skeleton, caught aflame like an asp,

inscribed with fire along the bone lines,

then slapped on a stone face of a plate

next to a Coca-Cola bottle as cold as hell.

In the market fruit prices jumped up so high — 

the seller women turned into hawks.

With a gibbous peacock brushing by their feet,

in the woods where each leaf  hides a face,

                          and each trunk a spine,

                                                 and each tree a crime,

                                                               where owls and angels,

a man and three women were contesting an apple.

The winner’s body itself was an apple with skin chewed off.

Inside her breasts milk circled like a growling animal

locked behind two heavy nipples.

It was both day and night.

Her moon-white hand on the sun-gold fruit.

In her hair more stones than in a graveyard.

So

    I followed the woman as she ate

    hoping if not for a bite

    then at least

    a spit in my direction.

    But she left nothing of that apple.

    Not even the memory of eating it

    ever.