- by Miranda Cichy
The year I grew tomatoes
I had no understanding
that my body was failing,
how the plants needed
more earth than I could give them,
out in the yard
on a concrete bed,
hunkered in pots
the size of my skull. I
fed them too early, I
forgot to pierce
the container holes
and June drowned them.
You can try too hard
to care for something,
and I watched through
the dusty window
as the summer shifted,
as my body took
a spade to itself, dug
and re-dug, broke
roots until the soil was raw.
Good days unfurl
in bad years
like yellow flowers, sometimes
the fruit does set. But
the tomatoes I picked
were swollen, their faces
multiplied, the seeds like grit,
stems bending from the sticks
that were meant to hold them up.
- by Miranda Cichy
United Kingdom
An afternoon spent, or was it an evening, or three, in a wheel clamp’s tender clasp. My dues for modernist mutation paid out in full: ribs, calves, hands, sections of skull, wrenching, arching, hardening. A homecoming of sorts, a holding; mattress won’t grumble, neither will I – if only we knew if we’re hot or cold, horsehair or hardware, flesh or fish or foil.
