Pushcart Nominee Gwendolyn Cash

Gwendolyn's poem first appeared in our 13th issue. It joins our other nominees for this year's Pushcart Prize.


     Choosing Berries and Onions

     Someday, I will be old, wrinkled,
     always tired, a little bent, graveled
     in voice, deaf to the small sounds,
     more in tune to the big notes, the harp's
     vibrations, the trembling of the galaxy.
     I will forget to worry about my
     sagging arms and ass. I will smell
     like soap from the grocery store and cherry
     cough drops. Maybe someone else
     will tie my shoes. I will still wear earrings,
     though, turquoise drops with French hooks
     to emphasize the only color left, my same
     two eyes. I want to see myself
     in the market then, my white hair
     in a wispy knot, bony fingers poking
     out the sleeve of a moth-eaten sweater,
     olive green, picking through the cabbages
     and pears, choosing potatoes and limes,
     all my life's fretting just more grist
     for the dust this body daily grinds.
     So what if love was a missed shot, a failed
     approach, an off stroke of the brush
     on the unforgiving canvas? And so it was.
     Always in its rhythm, the heart listens,
     and the heart resists itself. Among
     the mangoes out of season, I will say
     to myself out loud, staring the young box boy
     in the eye, All this here? Ha!
     Give me back all I have lost.
     He won't have any answers, either.
     In the apples he carefully polishes, though,
     I will see a light glowing, expanding,
     two blue eyes glaring back. This is
     how I will, I think, know god.


(This poem is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)