Maggie Blake Bailey
Arkansas Black
If you bite deeply, seeds cut across
white flesh like stars, each a rock
of bewilderment, a brown husk beneath
the tart promise of an Arkansas Black,
sleeve burnished, saved from fermenting
in the bee-thick haze of orchard rows
counting only the simple math of September.
Our back teeth ache in recognition, tongues
trace the first parcel of light branching
into constellations trapped inside our mouths.