David J. Daniels
Coriander with Mortar and Pestle
When you texted me
you were positive,
my attention was first
called to consider
The Language of Botany.
My attention was then
called to consider
The Language of Seismic Rupture.
I was standing alone
in the kitchen
and the word warm
came to me.
I was prepping a meal
for someone else
when the word
intensify.
I looked hard at the seed
in its stone bowl
and thought
how the seed, first
by resistance,
then by hurry,
would take its punishment,
cracking
at any hint
of a fault line, then,
the soft fibers,
the raincoat torn,
to open up to pulp.
I was trying
to prevent
by argument
that feeling of revelation,
having read
somewhere how the longer
withheld, the sweeter
the oils were.
My attention was then
called to consider
The Language of Old-School Grammar:
the oils were or the oils
are? I kept looking at
the time
when the fruit
of all things
from the seed head
split, and I sped it
toward completion.
David J. Daniels is the author of Clean (Four Way Books, 2014) winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize and finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He is also the author of two chapbooks, Breakfast in the Suburbs (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012) and Indecency (Seven Kitchens Press, 2013), selected by Elena Georgiou as co-winner of the 2012 Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. David teaches composition in the University Writing Program at the University of Denver.
This poem is not previously published.