Day 156 | Transplanting (excerpt) by Lee Ann Roripaugh

Transplanting (excerpt)
Lee Ann Roripaugh

5. Japanese Apple

She was given an apple on the plane,

round and fragrant with the scent

of her grandfather’s fruit orchards

during autumn, when chestnuts

dropped from their trees and struck

the metal rooftop like the small heavy

tongues of bells, and black dragon-

flies like quick shiny needles darted

in and out of the spin and turn

of leaves fluttering down like soft

bright scraps of silk. She wrapped

the apple in a napkin to save

for later, and it was confiscated

at customs before she had the chance

for even a taste. Over the years it

seemed to grow larger, yellower, juicier

and more delicious, and even though

there were burnished rows of apples

stacked in gleaming pyramids

at the supermarket with quaint

names like Macintosh, Winesap,

and Granny Smith, and even though

there were sunlit apple orchards

at my American grandfather’s ranch,

where rattlesnakes slumbered

in the heat and redolence of fruit

flesh, frightening the horses,

she sampled one after another,

but they never tasted as sweet

or as bright as the apple taken from her,

the one she had to leave behind.

Day 108 | Raisin by Gregory Pardlo

Raisin
Gregory Pardlo

I dragged my twelve-year-old cousin

to see the Broadway production of A Raisin

in the Sun because the hip-hop mogul

and rapping bachelor, Diddy, played

the starring role. An aspiring rapper gave

my cousin his last name and the occasional child

support so I thought the boy would geek to see a pop

hero in the flesh as Walter Lee. My wife was newly

pregnant, and I was rehearsing, like Diddy

swapping fictions, surrendering his manicured

thug persona for a more domestic performance.

My cousin mostly yawned throughout the play.

Except the moment Walter Lee’s tween son stiffened

on stage, as if rapt by the sound of a roulette ball.

Scene: No one breathes as Walter Lee vacillates,

uncertain of obsequity or indignation after Lindner offers

to buy the family out of the house they’ve purchased

in the all-white suburb, Walter might kneel to accept,

but he senses the tension in his son’s gaze. I was thinking,

for real though, what would Diddy do? “Get rich

or die trying,” 50 Cent would tell us. But my father would

sing like Ricky Scaggs, “Don’t get above your raisin’,”

when as a kid I vowed to be a bigger man than him.

That oppressive fruit dropped heavy as a medicine

ball in my lap meant to check my ego, and I imagined

generations wimpling in succession like the conga

marching raisins that sang Marvin’s hit song. Silly,

I know. Outside the theater, my cousin told me

when Diddy was two, they found his hustler dad

draping a steering wheel in Central Park,

a bullet in his head. I shared what I knew of dreams

deferred and Marvin Gaye. (When asked if he loved

his son, Marvin Sr. answered, “Let’s just say I didn’t

dislike him.”) Beneath the bling of many billion

diodes I walked beside the boy through Times Square

as if anticipating a magic curtain that would rise,

but only one of us would get to take a bow.

Day 59 | Apricots by Jennifer Grotz

Day 75 | Apricots by Jennifer Grotz

Day 47 | Apricots by Jennifer Grotz

Day 75 | Apricots by Jennifer Grotz.

Day 12 | Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

Day 9 | Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney.

Day 76 | Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath

Blackberrying
Sylvia Plath

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

 

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

 

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

Day 75 | Apricots by Jennifer Grotz

Apricots
Jennifer Grotz

I judged them very carefully, as though
I’d been given the charge to determine
which are good or bad, and they were all good,
even the slightly overripe ones with bruises
had a bitter ferment that only brightened
the scent. And the too young ones, firm
and slightly sour, not yet softened by the sun.
And the ripe ones, which felt like biting into
my own flesh, slightly carnivorous.

They had been elegant in the tree, tiny coquettes
blushing more and more until I picked them,
then they were minimalist and matte-colored
in wooden bowls, so barely furred one couldn’t
help but clothe them, enclose them with your hand,
caress each one thoroughly before taking a bite,
exploring the handsome freckles left
from some minor blight.

Now I stand under the tree and
pluck them one after the other.
Each one tastes different, like a mind having
erratic thoughts. Going into the trance
halfway between eating and thinking,
the thought of an apricot, the apricot of a thought,
whose goodness occurs over time, so that
some had been better earlier, others soon
would become correct, I mean ripe.

Day 9 | Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

Blackberry Picking
Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

Day 114 | This Is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

This Is Just to Say
William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold