Love Is a Fruit
Grace H. Zhou
A soft yellow fig, bruised
from its fall. I was a bad guest
and tried to wash it down the sink
but it was too fleshy, refused
to vanish without trace.
In any case, my hands were stained
with its milk-honey scent
like the night you held me
in the junipers and one future
I had potted withered
while another one grew.
Grace H. Zhou is a poet, anthropologist, and educator. Her debut chapbook, Soil Called a Country, was selected for Newfound’s 2023 Emerging Poets Series. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, Narrative Magazine, Frontier Poetry, The Margins, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for Black Warrior Review’s 2022 poetry contest judged by Diane Seuss, and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She teaches at the University of Edinburgh.
© Variant Literature Inc 2023