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"Eating the Peach"

By Henri ColePosted Tuesday, April 18, 2006, at 6:22 AM ET

Click here to listen to Henri Cole read this poem.

Eating the peach, I feel like a murderer.
Time and darkness mean nothing to me,
moving forward and back with my white enameled teeth
and bloated tongue sating themselves on moist,
pulpy flesh. When I suck at the pit that resembles
a small mammal's skull, it erases all memory
of trouble and strife, of loneliness and the blindings
of erotic love, and of the blueprint of a world,
in which man, hater of reason, cannot make
things right again. Eating the peach, I feel the long
wandering, my human hand—once fin and paw—
reaching through and across the allegory of Eden,
mud, boredom and disease, to bees, solitude
and a thousand hairs of grass blowing by chill waters.

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Henri Cole is the author, most recently, of Middle Earth, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer in Poetry. A new collection, Blackbird and Wolf, is forthcoming.

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