Today's poem is by Peihe Feng

Pineapples on Chopsticks
       

Me & my girl are leaning on the guardrail
eating pineapple with chopsticks.
They are bright yellow — so vivid
that you cannot believe there isn't
artificial colouring in their veins.
Shaped like carefully carved statuettes,
strange tropical flowers with obese petals
that sting my chapped lips with juice
sour like venom. Minutes ago the pineapple was sitting,
enthroned upon the high stack of textbooks
on your desk. Staunch as an owl, its brown and yellow
pelt rough against my fingertips; its crown of
dark green sword—like leaves stood proudly
facing my inspecting eyes. I walked pass
your desk and patted it as if it is your pet
and you caught my hands within yours, with
palms soft and wet like the pineapple's hometown
A raining orchard. Thanks to the knife you'd always kept
under your desk and (I never know whether you are serious
or not) beneath your pillow. The blade you'd much rather press against
the overgrown bushes on the corridor; your forearm
(we stared at each other through the mirror in the girl's bathroom
as the running tap water diffused the last trace of pink);
the boys who jeers and the woman who stares. Now
the pineapple wraps around it like a sheath.
A body brightly yellow, throbbing
with the possibility to multiply and grow new lives
upon its flesh; but such promises always die immature.
We pierce the pieces with bamboo chopsticks
taken from a fast food restaurant and watch the rain outside.
The campus is melting & flowing; we feel like two
on an island, surviving on mystical fruits plucked from
unknown trees.

Copyright © 2025 Peihe Feng All rights reserved
from ALOCASIA
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission