Green Linden Press

Anonas                                                                          —Willy Palomo


You can split them apart with your bare hands, easy 

as June and the wet sigh she blows over every neck. 
Yes, it may feel as if her halves pulse in your hands, 

but I assure you the pulse is the heat only, her uneasy 

sweat ticking, as you dip your nose, mouth, and chin 
in. She grows heavy from limbs thick with hungry 

wings, swelling until fruit cracks, white and pink. Sink 

your teeth around each tender fold. Hold each black 
seed and knead it between your lips. I once kissed 

her flesh in the back of a pick-up truck, speeding 

beneath the heaving breath of noon, my first 
summer in Salvador. 

Amor, I want you to know the humid and honeyed 

taste of my country, the dust you can never 
brush from the floor, the hammocks we tore 

one restless night. La anona’s cleft becomes the perfect 

metaphor for the heft my people shoulder, 
the scars left the night after we love 

what we know is lost. 

Willy Palomo is the son of two immigrants from El Salvador. He has performed his poetry at the National Poetry Slam, CUPSI, and V Festival Internacional de Poesía Amada Libertad in El Salvador. His writing is featured in Best New Poets 2018, Latino Rebels, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, Antologia de Posguerra, and more. He is a McNair Scholar, Macondista, and a Frost Place Latin@ Scholar. Follow them at www.palomopoemas.com.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2019