Fruit by Nan Fry in Farewell Issue, Journal of Mythic Arts, 2008 — Endicott Studio

Fruit

by Nan Fry

You bring home a watermelon

and put it in the fridge

where it squats like a giant frog.

Inside the red flesh —

black tadpoles,

shiny seeds.

I too carry something dark

within me — a shadow

on the mammogram.

The surgeon cuts it out;

later he cuts off my breast.

Evie, a buxom woman of seventy–five,

comes to visit. She tells me how heavy

her new breast is — "Two pounds —

I thought it was four at first."

She tells how she and a friend snuck down

to the basement of her apartment,

where there's a produce scale,

and weighed it.

I like to think of it there

among the apples and pears.

Laughing, this new Eve shares her knowledge

of the fruit she wears close to her heart.

The melon's dark seeds

each contains a green planet.

You comfort me with melons,

with fruit the color of rubies,

wounds, dawn.

About the Author:
Nan Fry is the author of two collections of poetry: Relearning the Dark (Washington Writers' Publishing House), and Say What I Am Called, a chapbook of riddles translated from the Anglo–Saxon (Sybil–Child). Her poems have appeared in a number of magazines such as Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Poet Lore, and The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in anthologies such as The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection, The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm, and The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. She teaches at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Copyright © 2004 by Nan Fry. "Fruit" first appeared in The Healing Muse: A Journal of Literary and Visual Arts (Vol. 4, Number 1, Fall 2004). The poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.

Farewell Issue | JoMA Poetry Archives