Author: Christina's Words

“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford

“Peach Farm” by Dean Young

On By Christina's WordsIn Music, Poetry

I’m thinking it’s time to go back
to the peach farm or rather
the peach farm seems to be wanting me back
even though the work of picking, sorting,
the sticky perils and sudden swarms are done.
Okay, full disclosure, I’ve never
been on a peach farm, just glimpsed
from a car squat trees I assumed
were peach and knew a couple in school
who went off one summer, so they said,
to work on a peach farm. She was pregnant,
he didn’t have much intention, canvases
of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste.
He’d gotten fired from the lunch counter
for putting too much meat
on the sandwiches of his friends
then ended up in Macy’s in New York
selling caviar and she went home
I think to Scranton, two more versions
of never hearing from someone again.
I’d like to say the most important fruits
are within but that’s the very sort of bullshit
one goes to the peach farm to avoid,
not just flight from quadratic equations,
waiting for the plumber,
finding out your insurance won’t pay.
Everyone wants out of the spider’s stomach.
Everyone wants to be part of some harvest
and stop coughing to death and cursing
at nothing and waking up nowhere near
an orchard. Look at these baskets,
bashed about, nearly ruined with good employ.
Often, after you’ve spent a day on a ladder,
you dream of angels, the one with the trumpet
and free subscriptions to the New Yorker
or the archer, the oink angel, angel
of ten dollar bills found in the dryer
or the one who welcomes you in work gloves
and says if you’re caught eating a single peach,
even windfall, you’ll be executed.
Then laughs. It’s okay, kiddo,
long as you’re here, you’re one of us.

Dean Young, source: Poetry (June 2012).

 

“Peaches” by In The Valley Below

“The Soul and The Body on The Beach” by Anna Swir

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry5 Comments

The soul on the beach
studies a textbook of philosophy.
The soul asks the body:
Who bound us together?
The body says:
Time to tan the knees.

The soul asks the body:
Is it true
that we do not really exist?
The body says:
I’m tanning my knees.

The soul asks the body,
Where will the dying begin,
in you or in me?
The body laughed,
It tanned its knees.

~ Anna Swir (1909-1984), Polish poet, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

“How We Love People We Once Loved” by Fortesa Latifi

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

When I tell you I don’t love you anymore, neither of us can tell if I’m lying. If old habits die hard, then bad habits die harder and this is on par with 3 packs a day. This is on par with a bottle before breakfast.
Old love tricks us I think. There is nowhere to put it. So it lies on the bottom of your heart and shivers. My body remembers you too well.
My insides light up like the traitors they are when you cross the street in front of me and it takes a full five minutes for my brain to catch up. You don’t love him anymore, remember? Or you shouldn’t, remember? Or you’re fucking stupid if you do, remember?
So ask me again. Ask me if I still love you. I don’t think so. But if I do,
it’s less like champagne and stars and more like faded Polaroids. More like the weight of the sun pressing down on the horizon every afternoon. More like the way you have to cut a tree open to see how old it is. Less like love and more like that detached way you love people you once loved.

~ Fortesa Latifi (via her tumblr madgirlf). Fortesa’s first book of poetry, This is How We Find Each Other, may be ordered at Where Are You Press.

 

“Fall” by Edward Hirsch

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

From Wild Gratitude by Edward Hirsch Copyright © 1986 by Edward Hirsch.

“Beyond Recall” by Sharon Bryan

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

Nothing matters
to the dead,
that’s what’s so hard

for the rest of us
to take in-
their complete indifference

to our enticements,
our attempts to get in touch-
they aren’t observing us

from a discreet distance.
they aren’t listening
to a word we say-

you know that,
but you don’t believe it,
even deep in a cave

you don’t believe
in total darkness,
you keep waiting

for your eyes to adjust
and reveal your hand
in front of your face-

so how long a silence
will it take to convince us
that we’re the ones

who no longer exist,
as far as X is concerned,
and Y, that they’ve forgotten

every little thing
they knew about us,
what we told them

and what we didn’t
have to, even our names
mean nothing to them

now-our throats ache
with all we might have said
the next time we saw them.

– Sharon Bryan, from Flying Blind