Here’s another food poem. The recipe is Drunken Figs. The ripe for "Soft Peaks Form” is Strawberry Shortcake. Let me know what you think. I am reminded and awed by Sylvia Plath’s images as I listen to her literary journey and re-read ARIEL the way she intended it. Trying to dig deeper. Experimenting with no periods, but I’m ambivalent about it because I use other punctuation. Do you think the poem needs them? Also not sure of the end. Does it need more? Donna Hilbert said, “End with an image. Don’t explain.”

That summer a boy mistook her bottom for a fig
Extraordinarily light, sound, sensation,
switched hats
She didn't see him behind her
swiping the blond hair from his eyes,
flexing his jaw
She didn't see
the heartache in the room,
the give and take
like rim shots
Her friends were busy
re-arranging barrettes
She raised naïvely on tiptoe,
tried to get the bartender's attention --
her turn to buy sloe gin fizzes --
dressed for heat in cherry pink seersucker
Extraordinarily the boy bent down to one knee
and bit her meatiest on the cheek
She snapped to him,
cursed a reddish purple --
all the jammy words
What kind of unrequited
desperation was this?
His eyes were dammed
with spent matchsticks
Her hand reeled an arc
of maraschino
Extraordinarily she threw
a drink in his face
Ice cubes renounced
his brow
What odalisque nonsense!
She rubbed
the fleshy concavity,
felt teeth marks
of a bruise