All afternoon
we’ve been coring apples
with the conviction of inmates.
A train sings somewhere close,
steps off the tracks & lands
in my palm. The apples spill
like people out of taxis – red-faced
& round. My hand is too small
to hold you. Or the train.
We’re fragile as jellyfish,
as little boys who mock
the creatures in their glass tanks.
Today the apples are animal hearts
& we carve them.
Your hands are sticky.
Your hands touch my face.
Your hands threaten to destroy
an adequate day & make it
transcendent. The sky seeps with light.
I’ve been here before, but before
it was dark & here we are,
stung
in the morning.
About Shenandoah Sowash
Shenandoah Sowash's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Menacing Hedge, Smartish Pace, VINYL Poetry, RHINO, PANK Magazine, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.The recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts, she was a finalist for the Smartish Pace Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the Devil's Lake Driftless Poetry Prize as well as the Baltic Writing Residencies Chapbook Contest. She attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference through a work-study scholarship ("waitership") and also traveled to Lithuania through an Editor's Choice Award (full tuition scholarship) from the Summer Literary Seminars. Currently completing her first book, Shenandoah lives in Washington, D.C. and works at American University.
