Picking Over
1.
15 to the fistful, these red
and under-ripe Richmond cherries
taste like pit. We spit the pits
in plastic baggies—we’re not supposed
to eat the goods but the manager
is busy with his magazine,
the perv. We joke when a new girl
starts: chew the pits, end
it all (there’s cyanide in there,
you know). One, two, three!
we chant together and toss them back.
But who could bear a mouthful? One crunch
and bitterness’d curl your tongue.
You’d run for water then, or straight
to the dentist. Only new girls
cough them up, flush, and laugh
about how stupid they can be.
2.
Spoiler alert:
I have an ass.
The boys on my block
would jeer, call me
apple cheeks.
Weren’t they
surprised to see
me ripen? I filled out
round, like August
peaches I’d stick
in my shirt to shake
and make them hoot.
One day Rusty
sneered about
my cherry—he
soon knew I had
a pit, knew it
in the plums.
Spoiler alert:
George Washington
had an ass.
That’s what I told
those boys, but even
I knew it didn’t
make any sense.
3.
This is how a cherry grows: A pit in a pile of shit,
the rain, the sprouting, burrowing, sloughing of the seed coat.
Years of just holding on. Budding, flowering. Bees.
The indiscreet bulge of fruit reddening as the flower
browns and detaches. Plucked, eaten, pit shat, again, or spat,
laid on a window sill to dry, wrapped in brown paper
and tucked in a young Slav’s pocket as she boards a steamer to
the new world. But that’s one in a million.
4.
Look close. You wouldn’t think it but
even these small ones can be
perfect on one side, and nothing
but a mush of mold on the other.
You’d think that by the time we’re done,
we’d have managed to do something,
but the cherries will just be picked over.
Even ripe these tiny ones
are tart, their red skins molting yellow.
Things are sweetest when almost-rotten,
when skins are taut and near to bursting.
I don’t count anymore, not like
the other girls. It goes faster
if you say “99,
99, 99”
and tell yourself you can quit at 100.