Cory Nakasue

A Citrine Valentine

The mutant lemons that bend the branches are perfect

for batting practice.
You deliver a ripe one into my strike zone.

A wet thud against my bat is a contract
connecting

Intention to completion
Pitch to timber
Query to quash

You to me.

The sound of rind whacked from flesh over and over and over
The smell of the sticky, sting-y spray

Is clean
Is easy
Is final.

I stand

ankle-deep in canary-yellow carcasses.

Will it be like this always?
You creating the conditions for such certainty?

I was never fond of strict lines, my citrine valentine,

separating

Hit from miss

Sweet from sour
Yours from mine

I respond to every sun-ripened riddle
until there are no riddles left.

You stand
beside a naked tree.






Eclipse Season

Winter sun. What a concept, huh? As if it’s different from summer sun.
If anything, the sun is brighter in winter, especially up north.
I’ve never minded flying back-and-forth.
I like the movement.
 
I would typically tap you for an adventure right
about now, a plea to be rescued right
about now. If you think I’m still mad at you, you’d be right
about that.
 
I may be reaching out
out of habit, searching for something,
kneecaps in the dirt, fingertips in place of filaments,
flash bulbs burnt out.
 
A snapshot:
Two black-haired children chasing waves
on a jagged coastline.
A call-and-response game with the rhythms of nature.
A to-and-fro game.
When wet gets too wet we chase
dry, when hot burns, we chase
cold, and we always win.
Conjoined like twins,
we’d press our chilly bodies together and try to absorb the heat of the other.
Our gleaming obsidian crowns
swallowing light, like molten truth
just to spit out balmy fictions
like black mirrors.
Like when I point my iPhone at the sun.
I try to capture it. The solar flares bend life into a slow-motion smile;
innocent, and bathed in amber like childhood should be, or, could be
if we get the light just right.
 
I wish I could keep all the sun
I soak in. Capture it. Store it up in my cells
like Superman. For use when I fly
into dark places.
 
Instead I swing
from black to white, adjusting the tones,
increasing the exposure.
Illuminating to obscure.