Peeling Fruit

by Allyssa Lucero

An Apology to Peaches

I’m sorry for digging my fingers into you,

Pushing through your pink

Velvety outsides, pulling you apart,

Picking out your pretty prune core

All glittering like a jewel.

I’m sorry for bruising you,

Gripping you much too tightly,

My fingerprints blooming

Across your tender, fuzzy flesh,

Coloring you dull and pale.

Forgive me as I lay prettier

Younger fruits above you,

They press into your softening,

Sinking skin, pushing you

To the bottom of the bowl to rot.

A pity how, you have no eyes to cry from

And you have no mouth to scream.

I’m sorry, but you were delicious.

A Girl is a Gun

You hold me like your daddy’s shotgun

Eagerly shaking about what’s to come,

Be a good man – be my good one,

Make sure you’ve left the safety on

Don’t need to be a marksman

Just need the spurs that you came in,

A girl ain’t no different than a weapon,

Just keep your hands where I can see them

Y’know my mother was a shotgun too?

Semi-automatic, with a short fuse,

Get too handsy, she’d shoot you right through,

A real dead ringer back in her youth

So if a shotgun is what you need

Then there’d be no better one than me

Third generation, the first round’s free

I do a good job, but I bring a lot of grief.

Atop My Mattress (The Operating Table)

I approach you open-chested

Expressing all of me to you,

I kissed you once but

You came for more

Trapped in time underneath

Wondrous light, our mouths hot,

Lips dotting incision lines

Like striking matches across skin—

The history of your body

Everything that’s touched it before me,

Your meat and bone, fat and flesh

A ruddy mash of pomegranate—

Between your shoulders

Where you were cut open,

I bite thread between my teeth

Closing every wound on you,

Kisses upon kisses,

I suture you shut.