Ode to the Cacao
How slight the resemblance with your kin– hollyhock, okra, durian, hibiscus–
and lavish your past: you beatified Aztec kings and popes,
merchants and commoners, earned yourself every bit of worship
with hymns and divination, cultish craze and swooning, science, fetish.
Strung into rosary, your seeds humored grandmother’s arthritic fingers.
Strung along, I kneel under your canopy, a library of flavors sequestered
in the orange, magenta, and celadon green pods affixed like sconces to trunks.
On the rug of hulls effervescing with mosquitos, I disrobe
beans from their sweet mucilage, crush nibs into a bouquet of bitterness.
The tongue drives off volatiles, delinquent as my fingers, but more disciplined.
Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of the collections Heartmoor, Cemetery Ink, Immigrant Model, and Father Dirt. Read more.