daughters imported from afar and grown
in monocultures, like bananas or oranges,
start to attract fruit flies in August. real
daughters should be grown in a terracotta
pot from seed or else they resist root
training. my girls are easy-peelers, their pith
falls away from the flesh in ribbons.
the windowsill overflows with their variegated
curls and heirloom lips. in summer my girls
will gourd on sunlight and nitrates,
stretched out and puckered like
honeycombs. you know, they balloon right
through their too-big clothes like
engorged moons – the heat does them good,
I think. real daughters should be pinched with
fingers, not clippers, and you mustn’t forget
to prune the suckers around their thighs.
sometimes it’s best to leave them to bloat,
uprooted, under the heat lamp on their
unskinned bellies for several days at a time,
‘photosynthesizing’. all my daughters are wired,
if left to their own means, good posture
is as probable as the Bible in
this chlorophyll world. delicate
daughters are best weaned onto thin
soil, that way they learn to stomach water by
the gallon. when their hips and chests start to
pinken and swell deflower your daughters so
that they’ll keep for longer. start by shearing down
the stems and snip snip snip all the way down there.
my filthy garden-patch girls ooze with the sticky
sweetness of nectar and bear pods
in the cups of their hands like an offering.
in autumn they skin-jostle for space, let their
juices dribble right down,
all swallow no chew.
my daughters know to fear aperture –
ways to split open like a pod but remain shut.
home-grown daughters are best left in the
ground and harvested when needed.