Figs
By mid-July, the figs are purple-green
and yearn for you to twist their delicate necks,
pluck their swollen sweetness off the branch.
Feel for the softest, highest fruit, concealed
behind a cluster of verdant teardrops.
You could lose yourself in a place like this—
a palace of sugar, a motherly embrace
of tender giving tendrils, mouth bloodied
and silent. You could forget yourself here.
*
Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City Press, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Gyroscope Review, Welter, Rattle and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His translation Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco will be published by World Poetry Books in 2024. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.
Lovely! Not a word out of place.