ON THE TABLE SITS A RIPE PERSIMMON

its orange-spice skin so suited
to the late-fall day it’s like

a substitute for dry leaves.
The bright jewel flesh tastes

like light on the maple tree:
tiny lanterns luminescing

in the sun. When you bite
into this fruit, you risk the pucker

of tannic acid, more tart than lemons
or the driest cabernet,

but if you let it sit and ripen,
the soft warmth on your tongue

will be one sharp pleasure
in a day undistinguished

from the rest—a string of waking
working sleeping; the breakfast

dishes, email, the re-heated dinners;
an hour or two of television.

On the list you make each night
of the things for which you are grateful,

you write down, “persimmon,
brittle green cap, risky flesh.”

By Angela Ahlgren

Biography:

Angela Ahlgren is the author of Drumming Asian America: Taiko, Performance, and Cultural Politics (Oxford UP, 2018), and other essays on performance. Her poetry has been published in Talking Stick, Kippis, and Amethyst and Agate: Poems of Lake Superior (Holy Cow! Press, 2015). She is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University and lives in Toledo, Ohio, with her Border Terrier, Juniper.