~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Scarlett Peterson

Ode to the Fig Tree

                     after Ross Gay

behind the abandoned trailer in Byron, Georgia

behind which my oldest friend set up a tent

when she was homeless and would not

come home with me.

She walked me around back of that trailer,

black-molded and empty, to show me something

blooming beside a pecan tree. I noticed you nearby,

unwatered but fruiting, bees flying from fruit to rotten fruit.

You reminded me of my gone grandfather, his house

only a few miles away, his yard holding three of you.

I knew you by sight and smell and so showed you

to her, led her under your self-bearing branches.

We forgot the sack of food on the porch,

my lover and hers talking there

as though this were a real home,

like it was when you were planted.

Under your branches we fed, found you ripe

and tongue-split a harvest, her first fresh figs

from a tree planted by someone

who wanted to feed their now-gone family,

who wanted perhaps to leave some legacy,

who fed us then, and the two of them

for weeks, mouths full of your inverted blooms,

your dense fruit plucked until your branches were bare.

Pastoral in Broken Haiku

                                   Kathleen, Georgia

Early spring and I’m

wearing my grandfather’s white

leather gloves, dragging

dried muscadine vines,

freshly cut, into piles soon

gathered by tractor,

vines thin, whip-worthy.

I consider weaving wreaths,

the gentle-bend of

soft wood firming to

form, keeping still the ribbon

or dried flowers I’d braid in.

I’ve made wreaths of mourning,

false flowers hanging symbols

of my lacks. Today

my lover stands with

my grandmother, both women

watching our work, maybe

talking about the vines

soon to grow from barren branches,

grapes bunching, wasp-frenzied,

from new growth. I step

on white violets, vetch, blue grass.

Each row of vines wire-hung.

I duck, my spine

not unlike the wire bowing

under weight of future-fruit.

My grandfather fights

the ache in his hip while I

hurry to gather

what he wants moved.

I arch and stand, arch and stand,

heaping vine piles.

Nearby blueberries bloom,

fat white skirts swarmed by bees.

They hang a dozen promises

of my someday basket filling,

then my mouth, freezer, and jam jars.

Every year we gather.

Pink sunlight fades

into our baskets. This finitude,

an energy expending.

Our bodies slowly go

to the earth, which we feed,

which feeds us.

How long did I long for this?

My woman standing there, this

place welcoming her,

our small cars kicking

up clay on the driveway, farm

cats mewling toward us,

this home I can and

cannot always return to.

Scarlett Peterson is a poet, essayist, and lesbian. Her first collection, The Pink I Must Have Worn, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She is a PhD candidate at Georgia State University. Her work can be found in Moon City Review, The Lavender Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Peculiar, Pidgeonholes, Gargoyle Magazine, Ponder Review, Madcap Review, Counterclock Journal, The Shore, Poetry Online, and more. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram@scarlettpoet.