Peeling an Orange is a beautiful poem by Virginia Hamilton Adair, from her book Ants on the Melon. This node formerly had the full text of the poem, but in the interest of reducing the amount of copyrighted material on E2, let me rework this into a review of the poem.

Peeling an Orange is about a woman and her lover. It is communicated in metaphors. The entire poem is a double entendre. The lover reaches across the author for an orange, and enjoys the fruit, and what is metaphor and what is literal becomes irrelevant.

"Your fingers pry the skin of a navel orange
Releasing tiny explosions of spicy oil."

The entire poem is peppered with statements like this, I haven't seen a poet so skillfully use a sexual metaphor since e.e.cummings' "she being Brand". This poem alone is worth the price of the book, if you're interested in sensual poetry.
And to Mrs. Adair, a line from her own poem... "Don't stop. Don't disillusion me."

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