Judith H. Montgomery

How to Lop a Pineapple

Press the tender spot at the base.
Tug one spiny leaf from the sharp cluster. Yes, 

ripe. Slide the knife blade twice
against the whetstone. Test the honed edge

on a thin-skin thumb. Now steady
the fruit prone on the wooden board, press

the blade down—hard—to sever
the crown. It falls away, exposing yellow flesh.

Resect the base, then grasp
the lopped body. Bring it erect. Split the length

of the innocent fruit. Cut again, 
until four, eight sections lie before you. Choose

the small curved kitchen knife—
exacting scalpel—to strip unresisting flesh

from skin, its thorned medallions
no defense against your intent. Last, toothpick

the remains, sweet fruits of your labor
(your anger) on the blue plate. Bear the bounty

to the bedroom, where your love lies
wasted, in recovery. The sheet stains above

the row of metal clamps that marks
the long red incision on his abdomen. Coax him

to eat. Something. Though you know
fresh pineapple is all he can bear to take in.

Lopping the pineapple: your hex
against his rare, his recurring and incurable cancer.

Judith H. Montgomery’s poems appear in Poet Lore, Gyroscope, and Tahoma Literary Review, among other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies. Her chapbook, Passion, received the 2000 Oregon Book Award for Poetry; Red Jess, a finalist for several national first book prizes, appeared in 2006; the chapbook Pulse & Constellation (finalist for Finishing Line Open Chapbook Competition) followed.  Her second full-length book, Litany for Wound and Bloom, appeared in August 2018; Mercy, which received the Wolf Ridge Press Narrative/Poetic Medicine Chapbook contest, appeared in 2019. More recently, her poem “Consider Salt” was awarded second place in Red Wheelbarrow’s Broadside competition, and her poem “Elegy for Hydrangeas” was a finalist in the Littoral Press Broadside Competition.