Tag Archives: Ploughshares

“AppleSong” by Terry Savoie

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1.

 Succulently sugared Annas tucked in snuggly against a peck
of blushing Empires who, in turn, are fitted alongside
Grannies, sharp-tongued, in their tight, tart skins;
Gravensteins & Northern Spies push forward bright-
bosomed & rosy-cheeked while Winter Bananas wallow
in their amber-lemon syrup which will never fully explain
the glow on the soft skins worn by Golden Russets, odoriferous
to be certain, brushed over with girlishly cream-coated flesh;
the Hawkeyes & Pipins & Winesaps, gentlemen from two
centuries past, so wise, say some, far beyond their age,
have now turned into the naughtiest, the plumpest slices
for pie fillings then they are joined by the polished, intoxicating
Gordons & peck on peck of sprightly Permains thrown in alongside
a bushel of Black Spurs, their sugary tones so radiantly fulsome, so… 

2.

Asleep: in
their one
ripe season,
apples are
packed in
tightly &
tucked
in straw,
in crates,
in the cold
cellar, safe
& silent,
sleeping
away their
days un-
til they’re
summoned
to the kitchen up-
stairs to serve
the Mistress’s
sweet purpose.

—

Terry Savoie has had more than three hundred and fifty poems published in literary journals over the past three decades.  These include The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review and North American Review as well as recent or forthcoming issues of  American Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review among others.  A selection of poems, Reading Sunday, recently won the Bright Hill Competition to be published Spring 2018.

The Last Massacre in My Lonely Notebook” by David Spicer

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Solitude isn’t a gate that opens.
 –Norman Dubie

I volunteered for the nightshift,
so don’t surprise me, Emma,
with your tribe of goats.
I can’t sleep, and if I could,
I’d dream of standing
on a snow-topped mountain
to view the valley below.
Emma, I need solitude,
not couriers from Eros
or a copper cup
filled with black coffee.
I’d rather watch reruns
of Alfalfa and his gang
chasing geese or wait
for angels to hold umbrellas
for me—I doubt if I’d
leave with them: my soul
has too many scars,
and gunshots on the beach
don’t help. God, I miss
the lack of terror now.
Windmills circle in my ears,
and I need to call a shrink,
but my throat is a cipher.
No, I want my black bones
to heal, ice to drop from the sky
like frozen tears, and a vase filled
with scarlet pimpernel adorning
the window sill. Then I could
savor a slice of pumpkin pie
before I write of the last Indian
massacre in my lonely notebook.

—

David Spicer has had poems in Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine,  Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and four chapbooks, he is scheduled to have From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press) released in the Fall of 2017.