by Shayna Hodkin
the plums were as big and dry as baseballs i waited weeks
for them to ripen all they did was rot
to relieve my guilt at their compost funeral i said
look at these atrocities
they were meant to be worm food
slowly eating yogurt in the kitchen haunted
by ghosts of rotting plums, i check my reflection
in my spoon and whisper to myself
you are a sprouting potato
an untouchable anemic potato rotting
like a baseball plum
Shayna is a poet and Yiddish enthusiast and is the author of hungry, a chapbook in the making. She is deeply indebted to the members of the Anarchist Poetry Collective, without whom none of her recent poems would exist.
This poem previously appeared in Non.Plus Lit.