Aplomb

There is not much to say about plums

that William Carlos Williams did not already cover

but I can say that they (and blackberries too) have a sweet

so startling deep that it hits you between your eyeballs

tingling in your brain and back jawbone.

The flavor emerges slowly, like blood clusters in a bruise

or the way it falls in water like backwards smoke.

Is it too biblical to associate fruit with death?

And sex? 

But Adam ate it too. The serpent spoke to them both.

What is forbidden always has flesh.

What is allowed always has breath.
What has teeth always fights back.

She ate it because he cared to ask.