MAGNIFERA Poem by Jaya Savige

Ripeness was a semitone below
the bone clef of the elbow

keying the rain-slicked
cyclone fence: the firm, saclike rind

of a warped minim, golden
drupe note for which we longed.

Stone fruit are fine tutors.
This one unseals a sensual nose hit.

At dusk they go lambent
like chunks of bent gloam.

Sucked, their fibrous pith
is birth-pouf — 

punk oblong pits
belonging in a goblin's pot,

infused with rich static
and the fresh electric scratchiti

of summer lightning. It's fortune
gave us this softer unit,

surely. Edgewise the frangipani
made a rain-gap fin

for heads rife with fire
in the shade of the mango belt.