The word “vanilla” comes from the Spanish word “vainilla” (meaning “little pod”) which itself is descended from the Latin word for “sheath”: “vagina.” a silver teaspoon of Pure Bourbon Madagascar Vanilla not a lot but enough to lift my mind from my American kitchen and wrap my senses in its African island sweetness enough for its heady orchid fragrance to cling to that spoon hours later and carry me back to the memory of you and your body spooned with my body the frames of our flesh bending and fitting themselves to fill and fulfill each other’s need you me us two seeds of vanilla in our own little pod pressed together until we yield and spill our own hypnotic pleasures too sweet for our bodies to contain
smooth confluence of sugar butter nuts cream this delectable dream churned into real-life lusciousness salty sweet delicious chunky pecan crunch milky mound that enters frozen into my mouth then melts in a pool of liquid pleasure ambrosial marriage of flavors tangy sweetness so exquisite that with each taste all my body rejoices even my tongue speaks in tongues
“Chocolate pots are distinguished by a hole in the lid where a stirring rod could be inserted.” ~ Taylor Newby, Metropolitan Museum of Art Some nights like this night an invisible flint sparks a kindling between us that sends our bodies beyond words shapes them into symbols and poetry itself My hips my behind my belly and thighs paired with the exquisite almost unbearable nearness of you become a feminine French metaphor replicating the curves and silver sheen of a chocolate pot whose hidden sweetness melts at your touch and the lush lean length of your phallus and your physique become my stirring rod most welcome agitator rising, gravity-defying flesh stick aimed and sliding into me pulsing churning spinning a delicious liquefaction of pleasure greater than even the sum of our poetic selves can express
for Sam He called the color of my voice mocha brown Deeper than caramel, he said, but richer and sweeter than coffee A voice whose liquid-like earthiness can be imbibed and savored and linger in a listener’s mind long after its sound has left his ear How then could I not delight in such a description from such a man who used his own voice, the soft silvery dark of dew on a morning glory, to call forth magic and light from something of mine so familiar that, until him, I dismissed it as ordinary
Shayla Hawkins is from Detroit, Michigan. She is the author of Carambola and Exquisite by September. She is a winner of The Caribbean Writer Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for Short Fiction and The John Edgar Wideman Microstory Contest. Exquisite by September was a 2020 runner up for the Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize and is now available from EastOver Press.
