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Impetus
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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Impetus In your arms, bulbs of tomatoes: hard, half-formed. Cold ascends, reaching the stalks first, sending them ground-burns.The corn dried from the inside. I once stole ears, still in the field as the field turned sour, struck with frost, and no gift: dry teeth, dust sacs, feed for the animals in winter. Hours before ice, you pull everything off its ropes, heirlooms hitting the plastic bucket. Life starts from the inside, bitter, compact, and blooms as it softens, flushes with age.The tomatoes might pink if we wrapped them in paper— as in April, the cherries we knew by the birds that gathered and struck before my mouth could form the W want, black birds stripping the trees, coring the sweet valves peck by peck. Each year we have reason to take some part away. I hurried to bring it inside to the table. Didn’t I deserve that, one lobed fruit, to split, to swallow, myself? -33- ...