How We Love

You pick the plums ripe,
skins ripped and dripping
by cyanide-laced seeds
popping like bombs
in wombs of bruised purple,
wash, sort, dry with dishtowels
printed with roosters and hens,
mix in milky blue bowls.

I yank, shine off wax
on shirtsleeves, lob
the rotten and split into ivy,
suck the pit, spit clean.

Jeff Burt