Watermelon of Forgiveness, by Laurel Benjamin

Viva La Vida Watermelons, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1954

Watermelon of Forgiveness 
 
My devotion consists of watermelon seeds, 
juice seeping from foam, thanks 
 
to the saint of forgiveness for the time 
I threw a ten-pounder across 
 
a patio where it ruptured against a tree, 
roots bloodied. Thanks to the flowers 
 
that made the fruit, a scrambling 
trail with keyhole leaves larger than 
 
the head-shaped bulb. Devotion to sweet 
flesh holds no hardness despite the rind, 
 
no bitterness against internal division, 
no judgement for a wild stripe 
 
leading towards musk green, 
fatty pear, powdered sugar, no doubt  
 
in a hammock-picnic or a motorboat lake 
with sunburn aloe. My thanks 
 
are unharvested trivial 
stitches that can’t hold a watermelon 
 
together, decorative cut edges with seeds 
dark enough to shine in the sun, honest 
 
soft crumbled, fertility crushed 
with years. Devotion to the prism 
 
of forgiveness demands the north wind 
wait for the harvest.

Laurel Benjamin

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work in Lily Poetry Review, Burningword, Eunoia, Glassworks, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fourth River. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and Ekphrastic Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review and has featured in the Lily Poetry Review Salon.