digitally re-imagined from photo found on-line
Blood Oranges
by Margaret Hasse
A woman came on board the bus today
carrying blood oranges in a string bag,
her lips like red cuffs on the sleeve
of her throat.
the shock of a Monday workday freezing
our morning faces.
I envy her, wrapped in a woven shawl
like a choir of crayons.
For months, I’ve tried to pull my heart
up,
a stone from the well of
disappointment.
Standing, she flirts with the driver in
a language
that clicks like knitting needles.
Her voice filling the aisle could melt
the blue slush on the floor mats.
Laughter opens her mouth to a diva’s O
plucking a high C.
Down the aisle she floats by our
plastic pews.
As if happiness has a hand on her
breast, as if happiness
is taking her body apart in pieces of
dazzled joy.
She is rickrack on a funeral dress,
a peacock’s tail fanned against a gray
wall,
a handful of bright corn to feed the
birds.
She smiles with a candle’s flame that
doesn’t fade when it lights another.
The sun shoots golden arrows through
the dirt-pocked windows.
Stopping the bus with a tug on the
white cord,
I exit the accordion doors to a walkway
through the snow.
~ previously published in Earth’s Appetite (Nodin Press)
