Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Between the elephant orphanage at Dambulla
whose house-high, hunter-blinded tusker

with his rubbery, crosshatched, stiff-haired hide
keeps stock-still as granite in the shade

and the spice garden where over herbal tea
into which was spooned a sugar or three

my parents were sold on the rejuvenating magic
of – the real thing! – unprocessed turmeric,

it must have been a hundred miles we drove
through a steaminess of palm-tree groves,

past dozens of identical stalls old hands
piled high with batiks and bananas, garlands

of postcards flashing in the light – where we bought
not a single one of those pyramid-heaped red fruit,

dusty balls with flexible prongs like Nerf ammunition
or a stress-relieving toy for executives; it seems rambutan

vendors replenish their displays constantly,
either that or no one ever buys any,

the dust on these tough red skins too rarely peeled back
by the callused thumbs that make it down this track

to expose the clear meat like an eyeball’s you must learn
to scrape off with your teeth around its hard red stone.