The Pickled Poem

by Roger B. Rueda

Writing a poem is like pickling mango:
first the fruit—green, hard-headed, feigning innocence.
You cut into it with a modicum of insensitivity,
see the pallid flesh recoil, from air and meaning.
That’s the raw, defensive, sour first version.

You salt the lines to draw sweat,
to drive out of them the too much feeling,
the wrong sweetness the poets all love to keep.
Then you wait — oh yeah, the waiting is the kicker.
They never teach that in workshops.

The vinegar of revision stings your hands;
and you stir both truth and memory,
ignoring the bitterness of each in turn.
Too much sugar, and the poem is polite;
too little, and no one will taste its pain.

And then days or years later, you go back to the jar—
the poem has darkened, deepened,
tasted like something one had to put up with.
You open it carefully,
and then it meets you: sharp, acidic, unapologetic.

To write, as to pickle,
is to fix the instant before it is lost,
to trust that rot and beauty
can share the same glass.
And when you taste it—your tongue is burning,
but you ask for more.