Tomatio Poem by Robert Rorabeck

These tasks you give me ring like cicadas over
My sweat and tears,
And I put my fingers on the shedding green skin of
A tomatio, and feel it like a jaded breast-
Then at night after the black children have graciously
Vacated my swings under the combusting canopies
Of slash pine,
I try to metamorphose beneath the very same moon
I have no doubt you are trying to sell under,
Though your face beneath it is indescribable,
A mask with so much power but no eyes.
And I thought I was trying to conjure you and your taught
Junoesque thighs,
But it seems that you know how to better handle this
Cerulean airplane,
And so you glide your sweet coffins like a broom through
The floors of close space,
So every corridors becomes your song bird,
And you never have to look up to watch me die for what
I was shooting for.