Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Jesus, please don’t cry. What you saw was
Holiness, really. Her making me naked
In the car. The steam that rolled down the window
Was holiness. The man who passed by and peeked in
To see what was going on was holiness,
Walking. I felt loved, right then. She loved
Me, or my body, or the shape of my clothes
Laid out on the console like traffic tickets. It has taken me
A long time to realize that when I think of fucking,
I only think of myself. Jesus, tell me you were never loved
And I will believe you. Tell me you never wanted
Like an animal wants, and I’ll laugh.
There is a sapling in the stomach of this body. Listen to the seedsong, like a wail.
There is a sapling in the stomach of this body. Listen to the seedsong, like a wail.
The Body: The Sapling
There is a sapling in the stomach of this body.
Listen to the seedsong, like a wail. The roots strain
Against it. A leaf quivers at the back of its throat.
It’s afraid the sapling will spill out of it, hold its organs like lovers do
And spill them too. That it’ll grow outside its container,
As fear does. That it is a container.
Branches slip between the fingers of the body’s skin,
Breaking it open. There are baskets lined for when it produces fruit.
There are words its mouth can no longer say.
Its mouth is busy holding a treetop.
Its teeth are sunk into the bark of more than it wanted to be.
Pressed against dirt, the roots have grown over the body.
The sapling will grow tall, as saplings do in good soil.
The body will forget the taste of fruit, as bodies do under trees.
Katie Grierson believes in aliens. She has been recognized by YoungArts and the Academy of American Poets, and is an alumni of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program. She is a prose editor for Lumiere Review, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Body Without Organs and Dishsoap Quaterly, among others.