The Orange
You are a middle planet
neither mandarin nor navel,
your surface pocked
with tiny dimples, worlds of their own,
home to star dust, space-mites,
interstellar microbes nested
in the sharp smell of your peel.
I turn to view your branch end.
Forgive my impertinence.
If I pull off the woodsy stem
will you deflate? Or launch
into my open mouth like an unleashed
balloon, forcing me to speak only of wonder,
and ah, the galactic pleasures of flesh.
◊ ◊ ◊
Ode to Allium
First, crush the garlic beneath the steel of a blade
and wonder what is crushed inside you too.
Rub the papyrus skins between your fingers,
read their luminescence—
a baptism of renewal—
naked seed freed from husk.
Second, sear it in oil.
Wonder at the sound of flesh meeting heat.
Gustatory transfiguration.
Lastly, remove it from the hot pan.
Admire its soft body: shiny, splayed,
still simmering on a dark, maple cutting board.
Ask it if it wants to continue or end here
and wonder when last you were
asked such a question.
You open your maw wide.
You bite and bite,
oil covering your chin,
skins on the floor,
a wild scent on the air.
◊ ◊ ◊
Untitled
When a jaguar appeared at the back door, jewels
of aquamarine held in its mouth like a delicate flower,
I thought: I need to tell you more and more, my dear,
there is a circus in my mind,
where crickets wear top hats
and dance across our kitchen table,
their long legs
kicking in tandem. I fear
someone has removed
the lampposts I used
to cling to. Now I spin in circles.
What mineral am I now, my love?
Am I still carbon?
Am I still something real?
It used to be that when I got scared
I baked bread. I tried today,
but the flour sifted through my fingers
like sand in a desert somewhere faraway.
The poet Sara Kristen Ritter passed away on February 6, 2025 at the age of 51 from complications from pneumonia.
Sara Ritter was a poet based in Seattle, Washington. A life-long resident of the Pacific Northwest, Ritter was proud to join in the tradition of writers based in this stunning part of the United States. She was a recent graduate of Pacific University, achieving an MFA in Poetry (2024). She was published in the Poets of the Coast Anthology (2023) and served as a competition judge for the Writer’s Circle Desert Poets.
