XXII. Beyond

Extant Ambrosia
by Marisha Thomas

What steps a box of tangerines
will take to be avenged :

A fruit’s skin rough like a foot’s palm
so odd and curdled
the flesh split open
with the memory of explosion

Sugar bomb
cooked in the back of a trailer
arriving to the shipment deck
wet and vibrant

Eviscerated
and heavy with its own lifeblood
vulgar exposure of neon meat —
what a waste!

Sweetened corpse flowers ferment
      stench blooming
as their bodies become home
to flies and mold

The bud of memory
wafting through unwanting air

Marisha Thomas (she/her) is a poet and undergraduate studying Liberal Arts at Soka University of America. Though she currently lives in California, she is originally from Tampa, FL. Her work has been published in Tenderness Lit, Carnation Mag, and others.