PRACTICE – Chew You – 15min

Sections, 8 or 12, French Catholic roots. Bursting with color. Greasy oily pulpy string caught between molars. Unrelenting. Bite-sized, thin-skinned, you pop with juicyness. Twirling unconnected pieces on the tip of a tart tongue, I suck you dry. Piece by piece, you are lost to me.

Oh, my darlin’, oh, my darlin’, oh my darlin’.

Housed in wooden boxes. I long for November. Goodbye, January.  I bought one gaggle, then the other, pulled back the red-orange mesh and juggled 5 between my fingers.

Pe-e-e-e-ling. Slowly, slowly, peeling, Your skin hangs loose to the pulp. Bred for comfort. The biting scent lingers, creased across my knuckles hours after I devour you. Easy pickin’s. Sticky fingers.

Rolling Stones?
Old goats.

Mandarin cream. Tangerine Dream. Pink Floyd. Alan Parsons. Acid rock. Red time machine. The turn of a friendly bard.

Southern mangos wrapped in ink-stained crates. You worship the gods of winter, California. Christmas orange, red, and green. Stuffed with decrepit white – when you go flat you lose it. Mealy and unattractive.

You have to be eaten fresh. Freshly brined, freshly mined, an accidental tourist. Algiers or the Congo, you speak like the French and carry a big stick.

Lustfully, I covet your mocking succulence as I dry up with age. Lotions and potions for 20 degree digits. You are at your best on snowy Solstices. While I have only my wisdom to stand on. And the sad lament of a wayward heart:

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
You were lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. No, it was Huckleberry Hound. Quixotic blueblood. And I was only 8. That Southern Hanna-Barbera drawl. Connection. Barbera gone, December 18th, a few short weeks past. Left behind. Legacy. Lineage.

Clementine – mikan, satsuma, tangerine. I eat you like Yogi Bear, or Pixie and Dixie, or who was it that hated meeces to pieces? Stuck in my head like a tired old song – that’s my childhood. Suspended animation. Juicy pulp fiction. Bright blood orange and summer tanned, ripe for the taking. Seedless. Until cross-pollinated by deliriously happy bumbles.

Beloved Clementines. The cat’s pyjamas. The bee’s knees. 

January 10th, 2007

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PRACTICE AFTERTHOUGHTS:

     clementine

“cross between tangerine and sour orange,” 1926, from Fr. clémentine (1902). Originally an accidental hybrid said to have been discovered by Father Clement Rodier in the garden of his orphanage in Misserghin, near Oran, Algeria. Introduced into U.S. and grown at Citrus Research Center in Riverside, Calif., as early as 1909.  [Online Etymology Dictionary]

SYLLABICATION:	clem·en·tine
PRONUNCIATION:	klmn-tn, -tn
NOUN:	A deep red-orange, often seedless mandarin orange.
ETYMOLOGY:	French clémentine, perhaps after Père Clément (fl. 1902), French missionary in Africa.[American Heritage Dictionary]

   

       Juicy.

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WRITING TOPIC – CHEW YOU

Eat something and while you eat it be totally present. Feel the texture of the food in your mouth. Taste what you eat. Pretend you’re back in a silent retreat. Talk to no one while you eat. Don’t multi-task. Just eat.

Once you are done and before too many hours have passed, sit down and write a 15-minute practice. You can post it raw (perhaps raw like the food you just ate), polish it up nicely, or anything in between. Can be prose or poetry–up to you.

Bon appetit!

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