Do not expect to find ripe bananas
at the market on Monday afternoon.
Those being placed now around the fruit stand,
piled on last week's brown-spotted assortment,

are all an unpromising shade of green -
tedious to peel with firm, chalky flesh
that besmirches teeth, ruins appetite -
nausea's hue aboard a sea-tossed vessel.

Shameful how they made this misbegotten trip
from plantation to port, across ocean -
cut from trees before they reached their prime -

only to waste on display in suburbs
where shoppers reject them, and the whole bunch
    ends up in a dumpster behind the store.