eaten like this, spoon and sunlight / in the early quiet of a new day
Poetry by Alexandra Umlas
Mangoes
We buy mangoes with expectations—
already taste the flower-sweet
juice on our tongues. Their green-
orange swirled skins are speckled
from being Earth-bound, heavy
with juice, waiting, wind.
My husband takes the knife,
positions it off-center and glides
down each side, crisscrossing
steel through sugar, like a fish
through water. Then, folding
each side out, the yolk-gold
flesh arching, he releases it
into porcelain bowls. It’s best
eaten like this, spoon and sunlight
in the early quiet of a new day,
the creamed coffee still steaming
from our cups, the blue
stretch of sky like a new skin,
ripe and waiting to be lived in—
Alexandra Umlas holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from California State University, Long Beach and an M.Ed. in Cross-cultural Education. You can find her work in Rattle, cathexis northwest press, and Connotation Press, among others. She also serves as a reader for Palette Poetry. Her first book of poems, At The Table of the Unknown, is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press. www.alexandraumlas.com @