Dreams of Snakes, Chocolate and Men
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| Snake | On Captiva Island I sit on a ledge beside palmettos; a blue and green snake sticks its head through pine straw, I lift the reptile, thin as my ring finger, and it expands to a gray, puffy-cheeked, diamondback rattler the length of a bed. Trembling, I sling the snake onto snapping twigs. |
| Chocolate Bar | Hmmm, my bittersweet addiction. A waiter serves me a dark, satiny chocolate bar, lumpy with peanuts like a Baby Ruth, but with a few bites missing. My teeth clamp on something hard. I try again. My jaws ache. I shove the confection off the table. The dessert plate breaks. |
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Snake, Chocolate Bar |
A viper slithers over an inedible candy bar. I tear aside the skin, do a cross section on the bar--discover only a teleidoscope of rich designs. Even under the microscope, candy looks alluring. Yet the surfaces within surfaces confound me. |
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Man, Snake, Chocolate Bar |
A swarthy man wears a violet shirt and eats pink watermelon. A purple snake shifts in his black hair, slides across his chest, intertwines our legs. He peels a wrapper from his chocolate bar, munches the candy, passes it to me. I taste. "Theobroma--food of the gods," he whispers. A delicious spasm ripples through my pelvis. |
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Chocolate, Snakes, Man |
Last night the chocolate factory exploded and burned. The smell of scorched chocolate permeated every room in my house. The lost, lucious promises. In the surrounding woods, some snakes fled underbround; others died of smoke inhalation. And in the plant, a man eating watermelon on his break perished. |
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Chocolate, Men, Snakes |
Even now in the Orinoco basin, harvesters with machetes reap cocoa pods for me. My brain still carries the chemicals chocolate and men trigger. All over the world, men in violet shirts split watermelons and toast me with their juicy sections. Racers, whips, cobras and kings wait, ready to weave through all my dreams. |