Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 31
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
Poetry
Farmer’s Market
Liza Libes
And how can I forestall
Shall I hope to see her o昀昀 in a white dress?
the lapse of pleated skirts & princess
Sometime in the evening
she’ll adopt a chair before a 昀椀replace
in the house that we picked out together
lacquered shoes because my feet will have grown
and with my walker I shall hobble over
fat just like a bully in the second grade
reminiscing on the blackberries and currants
with one too many sandwiches…
dresses,
I never liked to haul a watermelon
And she might press her hand to mine,
whisper,
from the market—
instead I’d gather raspberries and currants—
fruits that did not garner pitiful mementos;
the currants might have wept
“Mom, you’ll be with me forever.”
And might it be now time?
amongst the cherries and the blackberries
but thus they fostered
Peace and now I’d rather not contain a melon—
I do not need an older woman to rescind
her claim upon the stage
so I can nurse my countenance
at thirty as the subway rattles on
I do not wish to be
abused by all the seventh graders
bearing grimaces and knives
impaled like a swine
And like a ragdoll sewn back up again
Might I be too sel昀椀sh, fatalistic?
Dare I reenact the Edens of my youth
arrested in the summers of these vespers
and soprano voices coated in vermouth?
But might I hope to see her in the garden
fostering a pair of puppies?
Might she be less clumsy,
less afraid?
And if I should be rendered sleepless
might I hope to hear this music
in her dissonant crusade?
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