Pear

• Artist: Dumpster Kitten
• Description: Wrote this a dog's age ago for a class writing exercise: "Go the grocery. Write from the perspective of a fruit or vegetable." Printed in Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens (Policoff, S. and Skinner, J., Chicago Review Press, 1991).
  
  I altered the line breaks, some spelling, and some punctuation from the published version, but I figure, hey, I wrote it, I say where the lines break and commas go.
• Date: 04/20/2009
• Tags: pear

Green and hard, she is full of hope,
like the freshly-uttered promise falling
even now from the lips of a friend
whose intentions are good.
A fat-bottomed girl, she is the wallflower
passed over by those who choose
cherry red with quick glances.

A woman alone, she yields none of her bitter graces,
turns rejection into a thin, shiny coat.
All unaware, she grows rounded and soft,
hips bruised only a little.

Sometime in the night, she resigns herself to an end
swollen, overlush.
She moves to the edge where she teeters until dawn,
when she is plucked up, on second thought,
to drip down the chin of some reckless boy.