I want a fruit that cleaves
as cleanly as butter, and if
its barbed skin
grates my lips with an animal
scratch, no matter.
Give me one with salmon-
colored flesh
even if its nectars
mask its burrs
and snares.
Is there no succor
in the bite that
lodges inside,
in the sound
of a device
that could
cut me, slowly
whirring to life?
Dilruba Ahmed’s debut book of poems, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf, 2011), won the 2010 Bakeless Prize for poetry. Ahmed’s writing has appeared in Blackbird, Cream City Review, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Drunken Boat, and Indivisible: Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. Web site: www.dilrubaahmed.com.