Brad Rose
A Girl Like You

Brad Rose - A Girl Like You

Poetry
Brad Rose was born and raised in southern California, and lives in Boston. His poetry and fiction have appeared at: Off the Coast, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, San Pedro River Review, Santa Fe… Read more »
Sally Rosen Kindred
At the Altar of My Fifth Year

Sally Rosen Kindred - At the Altar of My Fifth Year

Poetry
Sally Rosen Kindred’s first poetry collection is No Eden (Mayapple Press, 2011). Her chapbook, Darling Hands, Darling Tongue, is due out from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2013, and her next book, Book of… Read more »
Patrick Milian
Boy,

Patrick Milian - Boy,

Poetry
Patrick Milian lives in Seattle, Washington where he is pursuing an MFA in Poetry from the University of Washington. He is also associate editor of the Seattle Review. Read more »
Angie Macri
Carat, Cut, Color, Clarity

Angie Macri - Carat, Cut, Color, Clarity

Poetry
Angie Macri’s recent work appears in New Plains Review, Tar River Poetry, and 2River View, among other journals. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs and teaches in Little Rock. Read more »
Helen Degen Cohen
Midnight in Paris

Helen Degen Cohen - Midnight in Paris

Poetry
Helen Degen Cohen is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, First Prize in British Stand Magazine’s International Short Story Competition, three Illinois Arts… Read more »
Kristin Camitta Zimet
New Year's Trip

Kristin Camitta Zimet - New Year's Trip

Poetry
Kristin Camitta Zimet is the Editor of The Sow's Ear Poetry Review and the author of the full length poetry collection Take in My Arms the Dark. Her poetry is in a multitude of anthologies and… Read more »
Reginald Harris
Self-Portrait as My Father’s Son

Reginald Harris - Self-Portrait as My Father’s Son

Poetry
Winner of the 2012 Cave Canem / Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography, Reginald Harris is Poetry in The Branches Coordinator and Information Technology Director for Poets House.… Read more »
Brandel France de Bravo
The Chemistry of Distance

Brandel France de Bravo - The Chemistry of Distance

Poetry
Brandel France de Bravo’s poetry collection, Provenance, won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize in 2008. She is co-author of Trees Make the Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise your… Read more »
Joanna Pearson
The Moon Children

Joanna Pearson - The Moon Children

Poetry
Joanna Pearson's first book of poetry, Oldest Mortal Myth, was chosen by Marilyn Nelson for the 2012 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. She lives in Baltimore, where she works as a resident physician at… Read more »
Amanda Leigh Rogers
The Safest Sex Is Absence

Amanda Leigh Rogers - The Safest Sex Is Absence

Poetry
Amanda Leigh Rogers lives in Abington, Pennsylvania with her husband and three sons and teaches at Bryn Athyn College. She is interested in poetry as both spiritual practice and artistic endeavor. Her… Read more »
Jen Hirt
Too Many Questions About Strawberries

Jen Hirt - Too Many Questions About Strawberries

Poetry
Jen Hirt’s memoir, Under Glass: The Girl With a Thousand Christmas Trees, won the Drake University Emerging Writer Award for 2011. Her essay “Lores of Last Unicorns,” published in The Gettysburg… Read more »
Megan Grumbling
Vapors

Megan Grumbling - Vapors

Poetry
Megan Grumbling’s work has appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, and other journals; and she has been awarded the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Fellowship and the… Read more »
Linda Pastan
Weeping Cherry

Linda Pastan - Weeping Cherry

Poetry
Linda Pastan's latest book is Traveling Light. She received the Ruth Lilly Prize in 2003, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award. From 1991 to 1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Read more »

Too Many Questions About Strawberries

Jen Hirt

are posed by old women at the farmer’s market and it’s about time someone said it, because in the minutes lost on inquiries about ripeness and sweetness and origin, I could have married berries with rhubarb and raw milk and jersey cow yogurt, could have sliced them like geodes, quartered them like cordwood, tossed tops to my begging brown dog, could have moved on to eviscerate cherries and syrup the blueberries and drain the sangria pond where the old women stand mud-logged, unsure whether to purchase this pint now or that quart later, plus there is the price (a problem).

You’d think they were as expensive as rubies.

But at the u-pick farm, a teen tells me that the old women awake in the 5 a.m. insomnia of strawberries ask only what time the gates open. Something is always riper today than yesterday, and yesterdays stretch behind them like shadows, and berries left to ripen mean someone will be alive tomorrow to pick them, so they will be at the gate and bend at daybreak in their long sleeves, their slacks, their orthopedics, their hatshade even though dawn is barely dawn, no questions asked, because to pick your own is to be wise and alive, to know by sight and experience which one is scarlet all around, the perfect route for Magellan to the center of a pie.

Maybe strawberries are about feeling young again.

But then why do my knees ache when I’m not even halfway through my u-pick row, why does a little boy scream a tantrum, spitting at his grandmother as slugs steal the distraction to attack sanguine hearts? White flags mark the rows picked clean, (as if anything were ever dirty with strawberries, as if surrender), and over my half-filled quarts I remember my own grandmother, Ohio sundress, at her garden’s edge on knees never aching, white plastic colander like a roller rink of garnets tilted toward my hand and while we eat the embryos of fragrance (why do strawberries smell so good?) the sunset pours all the world’s Bordeaux to celebrate how the only answer to questions about strawberries is yes.

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