Scented Flavor of an Ordinary Orange

" A long time ago, Danzig says, one of my students told me a story about a rice farmer in Vietnam who escaped to America. Boat people, remember? His only provisions for the small fishing boat were seven oranges. He couldn't imagine that the size of the ocean he was crossing could be any more than seven oranges' worth of distance.

Did he survive? Merav asks.

After he told me the story, my student told me that the farmer was his father, Danzig says. It was his father's voyage.

She tears one section at a time and holds the juice in her mouth as if to quench the thirst of a rice farmer in exile. He was farther from land than he'd ever been, with no shore in sight, only the wind and the waves for company...."

---from Blue Nude, written by Elizabeth Rosner

a poetic, seductive and secretly devourable read.