The Zingara Project

Tag: Terry Savoie

  • By Any Other Name

    Apple, the round fruit of a tree of the rose family, which typically has thin red or green skin and crisp flesh, is an image most people encounter on a regular basis, maybe even daily (as in one a day keeps the doctor away).

    Beyond the dictionary definition and familiar idioms that feature the apple as its main image are the many connotations, some as well-known as the garden of Eden, others more nuanced and personal.

    What are your associations with the apple?

    Today’s prompt asks you to write a poem using the apple in a surprising and unexpected way. Perhaps you begin with a cliche and turn it on its head or maybe your poem begins very far away from the apple image then finds its way back.

    Whether you “lean in” or obfuscate, here are a few poems for inspiration.

    “AppleSong” by Terry Savoie

    “My Brother Julian’s Apple Core” by Alejandro Lucero

    “Take the Apple” by Michelle Holland

  • AppleSong by Terry Savoie

    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.