Stone Fruit Suite

After Wallace Stevens

1
A continual veneer glazes the wind-
shorn palm fronds of the tropics.
The sun is plump and cloying like
a tender mango, suspended in
the sky by an immaterial filament.

2
When the earthquake hit, a million
houses shrugged and settled into
a novel milieu. Many were full of
taxpayers. Most kept mangos in
their homespun pantries.

3
For many years, girls have perched
upon tall rocks, boys in the dusty
beds of pickup trucks. They let
the mango juice soak into their collars,
shrugging linen smocks into the laundry
for their mothers to stoop over.

4
On a first date, cacao nibs and
roasted nuts are densely packed
like caviar. He unfastens the picnic
basket against a timber tree only
to find it inexplicably brimming with
mangos.

5
In another universe, mangos are
corporeal. They take odd jobs: an
accountant with papier mache ties,
a fisherman in roller skates,
a cashier at a store that only sells
gardening supplies.

6
In another universe, a mango is a
poet. She writes about the fear of
precipitating life, of an overripe sun
whittling promises out of her back
as she sponges at a hamper full
of laundry.

Kaylor Jones studies professional writing and psychology in Phoenix, Arizona, where she serves as the editor-in-chief of her university's literary review. Her work has previously appeared in Nightingale & Sparrow.