Something Like an Asshole, or, How to Read the Rind

You know the greasy spot on the side he never sleeps on
is a sign.
Your palms
are a sign:
The body is more water than flesh.
And if you know how to interpret It right
the way a mango peels,
meat stripping itself like a slow wind from the rind
resisting to slide from your grasp
is phonetic;
can be sounded out to tell it.

Lovers are the most obvious people
on earth Naked as sky over glow fish
under a Puerto Rican moon.
More than children.
Censors fail them
every time;
may have never been included in the package.
Labels lie that way
sometimes.
Machines miss that way
sometimes.

To catch it all
make your sleeping
like waking.
Eat the bait, remove the hook later.
Let the blood
Rorschach you into
deliverance.  

darlene anita scott is a Delaware native. Her work has appeared in anthologies including Role Call, Homegirls Make Some Noise, Growing Up Girl, and Love Poems for the Media Age as well as literary journals including Warpland, California Quarterly, Delaware Poetry Review, and X literary magazine. scott, the recipient of awards from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Arts Program, has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hurston Wright Foundation, Callaloo Writing Workshop, and the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony in Ciudad Colon Costa Rica.