WAITING THREE YEARS FOR MY AVOCADO TREE TO BEAR FRUIT

Western Kentucky University

Gauguin approaches my vegetable stand and tells me that I am not somebody he would paint. Red tempera drips down his chin, and I say that I can’t be confined to color—I am not Mormon, married to green with a red chin, all my egg-yolk sisterwives hanging on the laundry line having your kids—our kids— Joseph Smith’s kids—

Gauguin, I found you last night in a frog fresco grotto giving me ferociously my every desire, pounding paint brushes into my ocular foramen like a gardener

But your other women—those from, what, Mexico or something?—coming out from the creases of my eyelids from earlobes, unscathed, unpierced, sitting, lounging, nude, holding fruit, conveniently.

Gauguin doesn’t buy from me but from one stand over. He says my goodness those heirlooms are the best I’ve ever seen. Fruit hangs on boughs on trees all down the street, hoping he looks. I hold my cash drawer closely, fading peachy into soil and my own drooping hips.