A Color Named After a Fruit
Before oranges were sweet, they were bitter.
The whole world was more bitter then.
Nights, unlit; wheat wild.
Each element, bound in a rind.
And then you were there, in the rift cut out of mountain.
Your mouth with its triangle-window.
In the garden, the branches are dropping their blossoms.
Then bending with citrus, laden with sun-weight.
We can sit and watch the fruit go orange,
a hue that moved through five tongues to come to ours.
Let the moon go ochre. Your milky teeth soft
at my bared silk.
A hummed line. The thrum of the primary colors.
Beneath the pith, the pulp.
Tracy Fuad is a Berlin-based writer and poet from Minnesota. Her debut collection of poetry, about:blank, was chosen by Claudia Rankine as the 2020 winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize. Read more.
“A Color Named after a Fruit” was first published in The New Republic.