Clementines II

What sort of fruit
is bred to be seedless?
Where is the point of that?

Fruiting bodies are
meant to be eaten,
which is weird enough in itself.

It only makes sense when the seeds
in the fruit
are spread through the world,
fertilized.

(Which frankly makes humans bad-eaters of fruit
given our septic-system and all)

But not to have seeds
in the fruit, even one?

What’s the point? Even humans can eat ’em.
No good will be done
for the tree
or the species.

What a highly domesticated
pampered and paupered
strange little symbiote
clementines are.

Little edges

She’s terrifying.

Not because of the way she makes
it perfectly clear
how she owns the world.

Not because of the marks she can leave,
little slices. Big slices.
red red red.
blue black yellow green.

Not because she’s like me not like me a little like me
and that can be confusing
in an admiring
not admiring
sort of way.

In fact, because of all of those things.

But mostly because of her teeth.

Her teeth are so small.

They are white and they are each
individual
little pieces of bone
little bone knives.

Most people, you look at their teeth,
and they’re like the palisades
or a fence
they’re all together in a line, teeth
not a collection of tooths.

It’s that individuation
and the smallness
somehow, that makes them so scary.

What a surprise –
those little edges.

The better to eat you with.