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I hold this temporary sweetness in my mouth
a small wedge lopped off the mother melon
still tethered to the grove

watermelon is a social fruit
with many heads to a single spine

watermelon is a social fruit
I press its meat into your waterbed mouth

in your eyes I see the tool shed on fire
we won't need the spades the anvil
heavy as a blue whale's heart

you kiss me and the fruit look
like swollen bodies in a chain gang

you kiss me so deep I might never leave
the fields I've been leashed to

our bodies chafe a blue flame
we're not here to dismantle anything
we've come to burn the big house down

Xandria Phillips

Xandria Phillips is the author of Reasons For Smoking, which won the 2016 Seattle Review chapbook contest judged by Claudia Rankine. She hails from rural Ohio, and inherited her grandmother’s fear of open water. Xandria is the poetry editor for Honeysuckle Press and the curator of Love Letters to Spooks. You can find her poetry in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Journal, Nashville Review, Ninth Letter, The Offing, and elsewhere.