Cider That summer's harvest bellowed apples bringing the trees almost to their knees, nearly felled by the pounding weight. We picked less than one-tenth the crop, fielding fallers too, their bruised flesh fizzing with self fermentation. We quartered the fruit with a crisp slash and they fell in the bucket like waning moons falling from an orange harvest sky. Sharp edged blades and water made the mash running through our fingers like a fresh spunk, pouring like cold lava to the press, oozing green under the screws caress, ejaculating the last liquid drops, leaving a stink of dehydrated flesh we threw in the compost as a slow boiling began it's self controlling buzz. Five days after sealing the lid it began bulging with the weight of gas, lifting with small sighs of apple breath. We saw the soft scum, spawn mould, apple brown, spewling and yeasty. Siphoning into jars intensified the ochre muck full of it's own sap. For weeks it stood quaking in the kitchen till a late, low sun clarified through it. By Christmas we would be quaffing it. And under the buoyant trees, fruit still pounded with fermentation's pulse, making a cider soil boozed worms crawled through.
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