Honeycrisp
My boyfriend will eat
an entire apple in one sitting.
Peel, pulp, core. Hands me
the stem when he’s done.
Seeds in his gut. The calyx
a dank star. An orchard grows
inside him. The tongue
that slicks the skin. Hands
perfumed with bruised sugar.
His kisses a tender lament.
The heart that glows. How he takes
everything the fruit offers
and leaves nothing
but the stem. I let my body
follow. Set my jaw soft.
Rapt, greedy, this devotion.
Tough armor. Red glow. Yellow
flesh. Every bite a fall
from grace.
Notes
Where Sandra Beasley’s Cherry Tomatoes celebrated the messy, explosive rupture of late-summer produce bursting outside its skin, January Gill O’Neil’s Honeycrisp pulls us into a ruthless, erotic domestic ritual where an entire fruit is devoured down to the bare stem. The total consumption of peel, pulp, and core reveals how radical intimacy mirrors pure consumption, demonstrating that true appetite refuses civilized boundaries and embraces the original fall from grace by swallowing both sweetness and bitter seed whole. It anchors August’s theme of Feast in the sacred, greedy devotion of late-summer desire, reminding us that to truly love something is to take everything it offers and leave nothing behind but the stem. #poetry #januarygilloneil #feast #august #honeycrisp
Copyright © 2026 by January Gill O’Neil. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 19, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.