#FRUITS  #STRING OF BEADS

the kitchen counter's  ::  pomelo breathes a green sigh  ::  radio waves of
citrus oil / sturdy pampel-  ::  mousse sun / clouds unwad to blue

~

pomegranate as  ::  a naughty bdsm  ::  valentine / sharply
reprimand each round pink cheek  ::  with the gleaming silver back

of a spoon / show no  ::  mercy / mercy is cruelty ::  make it lick your boots
release its seeds into  ::  the soft open cup of your palm

~

the blood orange’s  ::  subterfuge of violence  ::  under sunniness
beneath the faux rouge of skin  ::  the unease of eating bruise

~

unpeel an orange  ::  immunity boosting spurts  ::  crescenting the tongue
Doppler’s spiral funneling  ::  into tornado’s sweet eye

~

pomegranate as  ::  rat / whack-a-mole it using  ::  the back of a spoon
until it spills all the beans  ::  lets the cat out of the bag

signs a confession  ::  bloody seeds hitting bottom  ::  bricking the bowl’s floor
spongey shreds of pulp float up  ::  incriminate the surface

~

eating pink ladies  ::  and sweetly spritzing cuties  ::  in tufted gray sky
outside, cardinals make a moue  ::  with waxy candy-corn beaks

~

denuding cuties  ::  of their easy-off orange  ::  leather chaps / sizzled
fizz scenting your fingernail  ::  pulp a delicate fishnet

~

pomegranate as  ::  war / the calyx's steely  ::  unbuttoning / pulp
mesocarp, vertex / shrapnel's  ::  aril / grenade grenade gre-  !

pomegranate as  ::  plunder / dethroned-uncrowned, mine  ::  the sweet veins with a
silver spoon / diaspora  ::  of rubies seed a blue plate

~

for how long did you  ::  misread STEMILT as STEMLIT  ::  convinced of stem’s wick
tongue a scratched match igniting  ::  the honeycrisp’s votive glow?

__

#(T=A)-T=A=N=K=A   #STRING OF BEADS

doubloon / daube lune / dub  ::  loony [looney?] tunes / sub weigh / sub dude  ::  sub limn ate / sub lime     
dillusion pasticherie / o  ::  licorice bricoleur!

~

faux masshole’s foam ass-  ::  hole / hegemony cricket  ::  beaux tie / beaux low tie
e beaux la /tray bow / beaux tox  ::  bow (tick tock tick tock tick) tocks

~

fez ant under ass  ::  pick / fetish icing / the silk  ::  roadeo / you’re not
my chickpea ocelittle  ::  you’re my chickpea ocelot!

~

unprofiteroled  ::  recalcitranced / in strudels  ::  in our mist / lapsed angst
sioux shang / lapsed angst sue shanghai  ::  the eggsistential angst yolk

~

crankypants / under-  ::  wearing / underworn / under-  ::  carriage / rusted
bolt / stripped screw / stuck nospark plug  ::  stuck wrench clank / spark gasoline

~

paperpig in a  ::  python / paperpythonpigged  ::  pythonpaperpigged
the python said: paper pa-  ::  per paper!!! and let the pig go

~

flagging a para-  ::  taxis / pterodactylic  ::  extinction / will not
be riding today due to  ::  a bad case of swooping couch

~

suspicious phishes  ::  badcat vermillionaire-ing  ::  feeling so monkey-
dementia-nal / do you feel  ::  monkeydementia-nal too?

~

pinafore, not a  ::  two, on the donkey / ballet-  ::  rynthian / there’s a
large charizard on your crotch  ::  ormolu’s chipped tourniquet

~

attention defe-  ::  cate disorder / atom-ant  ::  atom-antium
anarchitecture / space sa-  ::  vour / loaded nuns, safety off

__

I’ve been thinking about the false binary of nature and technology, as well as the false binary between lyric image and the materiality of language. I’ve also been thinking how these liminal spaces might be explored within the intersections between tanka and tweets, or tanka and Facebook status updates, and these poems emerged along this particular spectrum. Partially inspired by 10th-century Heian poet Princess Shikishi’s quotidian String of Beads, and also partially culled from the frames of my own tweets and Facebook status updates, these poems slide between nature and technology, image and language, traditional tanka and social media chirping.