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Early Cascade

By Lucia Perillo Lucia Perillo

I couldn't have waited. By the time you return

it would have rotted on the vine.

So I cut the first tomato into eighths,

salted the pieces in the dusk

and found the flesh not mealy (like last year's)

or bitter,

even when I swallowed the green crown of the stem

that made my throat feel dusty and warm.

Pah. I could have gagged on the sweetness.

The miser accused by her red sums.

Better had I eaten the dirt itself

on this the first night in my life

when I have not been too busy for my loneliness—

at last, it comes.

Source: Poetry (October 2006).

Biography

Lucia Perillo is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Dangerous Life (1989), which won the Norma Farber Award from the Poetry Society of America; The Body Mutinies (1996), winner of the Kate Tufts prize from Claremont University; The Oldest Map with the Name America (1999); Luck is Luck (2005), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and won the Kingsley Tufts prize from Claremont University; . . .

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