I’m not even your peach in Georgia
even a peach pit has a little poison in it
all the fruit I love leeches
say I don’t want
I don’t want
I don’t want babies in a cherry basket
Do you remember the South Carolina peach butt?
It was a water tower.
Gaffney. On I-85.
you have one coy feeling
pitched back in the morning a kind of antique
how classic is repeated when I dye blonde
classic American Old Spice classic
the classic American road trip
We can’t talk about coke.
Because we lived in Atlanta?
sell a scent I don’t expect
chemical homongeny the American dream
a nonorganic orgy over vanilla
You never wear perfume anyway
Well I remember what’s dead in it.
When we lived in Atlanta you said
I don’t appreciate the fun in beauty
I was pissing on an apple tree, how is that not both?
I slash a black marker across a thrifted painting
leaving a friendly chasm in the trees
there’s an orchard
one or two creatures one or two human creatures
a certain gold light lazy on some bark
and the hole I have made
a portal to get out
pastoral
It’s cute you think you left the farm
take a girl out of…
It’s cute you mark territory
like a dog
Occasional Poem
a thousand daffodils / to save your canon / O
hills the hills a rolling / no eyes / I forget
to be appropriate / jaundice the eye peak /
or call it blossoming / to bloom / the false
logic / to bloom in opposition to breaking /
a dandelion licks concrete / that’s a symbol /
that’s you / and you can do better / you can
bloom / follow those double yellow lines /
I double / a false positive / an organ
for judging / a criterion / criteria for hope /
when I fill a vessel with yellow flowers
someone will say / a riot of colour /
my riot is not a threat / judas is painted
in yellow /soured light /given in a kiss/
a thousand youtube videos / to get the gold
out of your hair / a cool blonde / a cool
girl /criteria for kowtowing your natural
urges / bulb in the snow / the bowl smashed
to the sidewalk / small flower crushed
in the book read in childhood /a blossoming
made virile / made useful / a riot of colour /
in my vessel / my vex / investing in richer
shades / against the marble wall / nothing
splits / oak tree through concrete /
there is a kind of power / a thousand
daffodils can’t coward /candescent can-can/
the call of criteria cankered / the light
not yellowed / but gleaming
Caroline Crew is the author of PINK MUSEUM (Big Lucks, 2015), as well as several chapbooks. Her poetry and essays appear or are forthcoming in Conjunctions, DIAGRAM, and Gulf Coast, among others. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD at Georgia State University, after earning an MA at the University of Oxford and an MFA at UMass-Amherst. She's online here: caroline-crew.com.