Magnifera

Ripeness was a semitone below

the bone clef of the elbow

keying the rain-slicked

cyclone fence: the firm, saclike rind

of a warped minim, golden

drupe note for which we longed.

Stone fruit are fine tutors.

This one unseals a sensual nose hit.

At dusk they go lambent

like chunks of bent gloam.

Sucked, their fibrous pith

is birth-pouf — 

punk oblong pits

belonging in a goblin’s pot,

infused with rich static

and the fresh electric scratchiti

of summer lightning. It’s fortune

gave us this softer unit,

surely. Edgewise the frangipani

made a rain-gap fin

for heads rife with fire

in the shade of the mango belt.