- Tumbling through the
- city in my
- mind without once
- looking up
- the racket in
- the lugwork probably
- rehearsing some
- stupid thing I
- said or did
- some crime or
- other the city they
- say is a lonely
- place until yes
- the sound of sweeping
- and a woman
- yes with a
- broom beneath
- which you are now
- too the canopy
- of a fig its
- arms pulling the
- September sun to it
- and she
- has a hose too
- and so works hard
- rinsing and scrubbing
- the walk
- lest some poor sod
- slip on the
- silk of a fig
- and break his hip
- and not probably
- reach over to gobble up
- the perpetrator
- the light catches
- the veins in her hands
- when I ask about
- the tree they
- flutter in the air and
- she says take
- as much as
- you can
- help me
- so I load my
- pockets and mouth
- and she points
- to the step-ladder against
- the wall to
- mean more but
- I was without a
- sack so my meager
- plunder would have to
- suffice and an old woman
- whom gravity
- was pulling into
- the earth loosed one
- from a low slung
- branch and its eye
- wept like hers
- which she dabbed
- with a kerchief as she
- cleaved the fig with
- what remained of her
- teeth and soon there were
- eight or nine
- people gathered beneath
- the tree looking into
- it like a
- constellation pointing
- do you see it
- and I am tall and so
- good for these things
- and a bald man even
- told me so
- when I grabbed three
- or four for
- him reaching into the
- giddy throngs of
- yellow-jackets sugar
- stoned which he only
- pointed to smiling and
- rubbing his stomach
- I mean he was really rubbing his stomach
- like there was a baby
- in there
- it was hot his
- head shone while he
- offered recipes to the
- group using words which
- I couldn’t understand and besides
- I was a little
- tipsy on the dance
- of the velvety heart rolling
- in my mouth
- pulling me down and
- down into the
- oldest countries of my
- body where I ate my first fig
- from the hand of a man who escaped his country
- by swimming through the night
- and maybe
- never said more than
- five words to me
- at once but gave me
- figs and a man on his way
- to work hops twice
- to reach at last his
- fig which he smiles at and calls
- baby, c’mere baby,
- he says and blows a kiss
- to the tree which everyone knows
- cannot grow this far north
- being Mediterranean
- and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils
- of Jordan and Sicily
- but no one told the fig tree
- or the immigrants
- there is a way
- the fig tree grows
- in groves it wants,
- it seems, to hold us,
- yes I am anthropomorphizing
- goddammit I have twice
- in the last thirty seconds
- rubbed my sweaty
- forearm into someone else’s
- sweaty shoulder
- gleeful eating out of each other’s hands
- on Christian St.
- in Philadelphia a city like most
- which has murdered its own
- people
- this is true
- we are feeding each other
- from a tree
- at the corner of Christian and 9th
- strangers maybe
- never again.
- Copyright © 2013 by Ross Gay. Originally published in the May–June 2013 issue of American Poetry Review. Reprinted from Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database.