Paul Hostovsky
Sharing the Orange
First I hold it out to you
in my hands which are
trembling a little so you
take them in your hands
you take the orange in my
hands in your hands and you
stop my trembling first
then you kiss me with your
eyes wide open and I feel your
hands on the orange and I
hear the skin tear open
I hear your fingernail tear it
ripping it back without taking
your eyes away from my eyes
all this you do without looking
you guide my finger to the wound
and you press my finger into it
and together we peel the rest of it
completely away without looking
away from each other’s eyes the wet
soft creature of the orange sitting
naked in our hands the smell of it
rising like a sunrise on our fingers
which we hold up to our noses
and put into each other’s mouths
sharing the orange without eating it
tasting the orange without eating it
without looking and without looking away
The Fruits of Foreign Language Study
I met her at the reception.
She was exceptionally beautiful
and spoke with a thick accent
about the rhythms of her native
tongue. After popping a fruit-
filled appetizer into her mouth
she airily waved the tiny spear
of a tasselled toothpick in the air
while I waited for her to chew
and swallow. “In my native
tongue,” she said, giving her lips a last lick,
the toothpick coming down
on each word like a conductor’s baton
or a tool for poetic scansion,
“the words are all trochees
and dactyls. The first syllable always
carries the stress. No exceptions. Like love
at first sight, phonetically speaking.”
I nodded my understanding
and her eyes widened. “However,
our liquids,” and here she aimed
the lucky tip of the toothpick at her mouth,
almost but not quite touching it,
“are difficult for you foreigners
to pronounce.” Then she rolled
a consonant cluster with an r inside it
right off the tip of her tongue, to illustrate.
It was a dark grape wrapped in its native
mist, which somehow (I can’t say how)
I caught in my mouth and without bursting it
gave back to her whole.