Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Poems about Fruit
Tender Buttons [Apple]
by Gertrude Stein, read by Ann Lauterbach
A Short History of the Apple
by Dorianne Laux
An Apple Gathering
by Christina Rossetti
Apples
by Grace Schulman
Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm
by Carl Phillips
Basket of Figs
by Ellen Bass
Goblin Market
by Christina Rossetti
Orchard
by H. D.
Pear Tree
by H. D.
Persimmons
by Li-Young Lee
Recuerdo
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Pomegranate
by Eavan Boland
The Tropics of New York
by Claude McKay
To a Poor Old Woman
by William Carlos Williams
White Apples
by Donald Hall
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

Summary Wednesday

 
by Matthew Pennock

Half the girls in this train car wear gold earrings, large and oval, bisected
        by their names in script. They are yours because you name them,
        your Lekenya, your Mirellie, your Yesenia.

Excessively ornate, almost illegible, like your grandmother's cramped
        handwriting in a Hallmark card with loopy golden cursive relaying
        every detail of the rest home in Orlando

where her former pastor now resides—the year of establishment,
        the founder's name, what the food is like, how once someone moves in,
        they have no plans of ever moving again.

Tomorrow, you settle on a plan for breakfast, you settle on banana. You are
        not hungry. It sits there on the desk still in peel, nervous for inevitable
        disrobing. Stare at Banana. You sit there. It is afraid.









From Sudden Dog by Matthew Pennock. Copyright © 2012 by Matthew Pennock. Reprinted with permission of Alice James Books. All rights reserved.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.