Peel

Brian Swann

I read that in this famous person's poems "she searches
for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self."
Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn't know


whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen,
I came across Tolstoy's "What is Art?" where he said
an artist is different from other people because instead


of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why
can't he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war
just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground


where one of the kids was handing out something that turned out
to be small pieces of orange peel, something exotic we'd never
seen before which I smelled, nibbled, and finally ate for this
                                             poem.

Swann is evidently talking about J. D. McClatchy’s description of Shu Ting.