Tag Archives: oranges

Poetry: Orange Grove by Beenish Ahmed

books poetry lit June 16, 2015 Leave a comment

I want to tear a page from the book of alliterations.

To get lost in an orange grove where blossoms

abound but bear no fruit. Here, they are losing

their language, but remember enough

to know what’s been forgotten. Still the women speak it

to dishtowels and bathwater. Sweep bits of it off the floors

and call it dust. There is never anywhere that isn’t here.

I’ve learned that more times than I can count before now.

Before now became then. Before then

became us. Before us ever was. I’m told

there was a tree

read more at Waxwing

Poetry: Garden In The Iran-Iraq War

books poetry lit January 19, 2015 1 Comment

In this time, happy branches bow
with young fruit so heavy
limbs must be lopped    off the trunk.      God needs to
borrow another son.    Sisters, it’s this,
we say, or your whole garden. And you—      you will want to hide
your fruit behind the family’s coats in a hall closet—you will want
your sons to stay still, buried
under your long coats, close—their bodies soft. Breathing,
maybe curled up, your boys will wait in a cracked suitcase,
or a wooden box,     just for the time
no bomb siren shakes
your trees. No, no one ever really knows.     Imagine
a night your courtyard’s lit by the fire of burning

oranges still clinging to their branches. Remember, this whole
orchard could burn.

-Aliah Lavonne Tigh, Matter

Wisewords: Eat More Fruit

this & that August 31, 2014 Leave a comment

orange slices