persimmon season
Jessica Popeski | Poetry
grieve the end of persimmon season—
a year without their caramel flesh.
january unspools unendingly, sparrows
ballistic among the fractured elbows
of meadowsweet; the sky melts charcoal
to apricot, snow silver & curdling.
how can a body withstand this?
tape-measuring time by surgeries:
colon resections, an ectopic pregnancy,
an abortion, a crushed foot. your heart
smashes. every good shell you
hold— their velvet bellies, iridescent
lavender & pearl— splinters to shrapnel
in your hands. cling to your pitbull-poodle,
scrub your knuckles red, wash & rewash
her dish, your body protesting no, no.
Jessica Popeski is a dis/abled opera singer, Professor of English, Creative Writing, and Music, and internationally published, intersectional ecofeminist poet. Her work has been published in carte blanche, Leaf Press, Room, Hart House Review, Write Where We Are Now, Riddle Fence, The Woven Tale Press, White Wall Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of multiple scholarships and awards, was named one of Tkaronto/Toronto’s “exceptional up and coming writers” by Open Book, and authored “Oratorio” and “The Wrong Place” with Anstruther Press. “the problem with having a body” is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press. She was raised, for the most part, in Moscow, Russia, and Sheffield, England, by her mother and grandmother.