Strawberries
Greg Sendi
(Antrim County 2023)
They are, as every splendid thing,
impossible as alchemy—
as if a squad of boozy gnomes
flung off their caps and vanished through
some Paracelsian ring.
This is by rights potato land.
That it should overflow midyear
in bursts as red as lechery
all seems a privacy laid bare,
a meshy underthing
of old avowals up from dirt
through surface, stems and into buds
that promise–plump await your lips—
as on the first day you were mine
upon a gathering
of kisses that would outswell
the reprimand of strawberries.
They say the fields are full of ghosts
because, you know, of course they are,
as every splendid thing.
Greg Sendi (@gsendi) lives in and writes from the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Recently his poetry and stories have appeared in or are forthcoming in a wide range of publications, including Apricity, The Briar Cliff Review, CONSEQUENCE, Free State Review, The Masters Review, Plume, San Antonio Review, and upstreet. His 2020 short story “Two Not Touch” was shortlisted for the 2021 Driftwood Press Adrift short story competition. His 2022 poems “A Compass for Ariadne” and “Bottom” were finalists for the 2023 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Contest.
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