Summary

“I Watch Her Eat the Apple” is the story of the main speaker in the collection watching a woman eat an apple. The speaker watches, transfixed, as the woman holds the apple, touches it, twists the stem and pulls off the sticker, and then eats it. As the speaker watches, she imagines strange and sometimes violent associations with both the woman and the apple, and then she imagines licking juice from the apple off of the woman’s fingers.

In “Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love,” the speaker compares the images she sees of war with her experience of desire for a new lover. The speaker also connects current American wars overseas with her own experience of living in a land colonized by the ancestors of the current political power structure. This comparison further connects the speakers feelings of love and desire...