Picking Crabapples

There was a day last September,
still warm and sunny,
when I walked the beach barefoot
and felt the sun romance my shoulders.
Later, my son and I climbed
our apple tree to pick the wild crabapples
and snack on the thumb-sized fruits.
Last year a bear broke off a bough,
but the tree is middle-aged and sturdy enough
to carry on with a large scar and a new shape.
My son dared me to climb higher.
I had one foot braced against the trunk
and the other in a crook,
my legs split and stretched
as I reached higher and further.
Just a few months before, the little nubs
were small, white blooms.
Then they were ripening,
flushed red-orange like rosehips.
It was too early, we knew,
for the little extra nectar maturity provides,
for the flaming red a good frost would bring.
But I was tempted by his playfulness,
and he by the sun.
When we couldn’t reach any higher,
we left the rest for the porcupines.
I didn’t know it then,
but those were his last days of youth.
I did not know that he’d cut his hair
and I would feel the lost weight
like a pressed bruise.
I did not know that the next summer
I’d climb the tree only once,
lonely and not so high,
that the apples from then on
would fall to the ground as
bright red globes in October.
I did not know any of this as we lowered
ourselves to the still green earth,
a bittersweet tartness drying my mouth.

Sky Island Journal, Issue 11, Winter 2020

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Sunflowers Bloom in December

When the sunflowers bloom in December,
pomegranates split and hang from branches like stars.
The season is late, the figs have dried and fallen to dirt.
My grandmother now lives here like she belongs,
her face dark and ripe.

My grandmother lives here as if she belongs,
a bougainvillea in full bloom.
Her thickened fingers point,
her voice speaking the language of the land
in the naming of things,
the words familiar and haunting,
swelling with adoration:
javelina, ocotillo, kumquat,
pinacate. She may say one word-
but mean many.
Like when we say “die,” we mean
let me lie under this sun and ask for entrance.

When the day goes dark,
I understand, grandmother, this is the place.
The stars explode in the body and still.
In the desert, everything dies.
Eventually, we find their black shells
and remember life’s brilliance.
We pocket the shells and say their names.

Sky Island Journal, Issue 9, Summer 2019

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PUBLICATIONS:

“Found” in Northwest Review, vol. 51, no. 1, Fall 2021

“Rain, Southeast Alaska, Pandemic” in Windfall, vol. 19, no. 2, Spring 2021

“Sheltering with Teenagers” in KTOO Community Connections, April 2020

“Picking Crabapples” in Sky Island Journal, Issue 11, Winter 2020

“Sunflowers Bloom in December” and “After He Died, She Returned Out of Habit” in Sky Island Journal, Issue 9, Summer 2019

“In Your Words” in Literary Mama, September 2017

“Until Then” in Cirque, vol. 7, no. 2, Summer 2016

“The Finale” in Cirque, vol. 7, no. 2, Summer 2016

“Transient” in Tidal Echoes, Spring 2016

“Rupture” in Tidal Echoes, Spring 2016

“Gris” in Cirque, vol. 6, no. 2, Summer 2015

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PRIZES:

“Bloom” 1st Place Poetry, Alaska Dispatch News Creative Writing Contest, May 2015

“Westward” 1st Place Adult, Fairbanks Arts Association Statewide Poetry Contest, 2002