(with apologies to Carol Ann Duffy)
Forget onions
my love is like a watermelon
wet, unwieldy, full of seed
yet refreshing and sweet
even if green.
My love is like a watermelon:
heavy, thick-skinned, rotund,
unseen among the vines
that mark the sharp ground.
A watermelon is like an onion:
layers give way to underneath
like a poem where words give way
to what is beneath.
What is beneath is often love.
A watermelon is not like an onion:
one is smelly, one creates fear.
But a watermelon is like my love
and the onion that brings a tear.
•••
Andre Bagoo is a journalist working in Trinidad. He writes for Newsday and has published poems and book reviews in journals like the Boston Review, The Caribbean Writer, Caribbean Review of Books and Draconian Switch. His first book of poems, Trick Vessels, is due next year. He is currently collaborating with the poet and writer Vahni Capildeo on a photometry project. His blog, PLEASURE, can be found at www.pleasurett.blogspot.com.
tongues of the ocean 