Floyd Cheung

Chocolate Caramels

“ . . . and I had but one orange.”
—Richard Wright, from Black Boy

the first time Julia Wright read 
her father’s book she curled up in bed 

with a box of chocolate caramels
she a student at the Sorbonne 

he a black boy in Arkansas 
who one Christmas received an orange 

heavy in his pocket all day
waiting till bedtime to peel and savor

for him a gift for the year 
for her burnt sugar pith