The Pomologist
Jennifer Miyakawa

I hit your bed
a coconut hitting sand.
I rolled into the you-shaped dent
like the pears that roll down orchard hillsides.
I lay before you like a curved cornucopia,
twisting ‘til you had wrapped around my tree-trunk torso,
my crooked, clinging
fiddlehead fingers,
my arms as pale as apple blossoms.
I had been flaunting my flowers all night ―
swaying sweat-dampened stems,
pushing pheromones past my petal-pink pistils
that smelled like winter-time promises,
wait until you see my spring.
I bobbed and jiggled
like swollen peaches
pulling down branches
with the weight of their juices.
Their downy hairs lay soft
until they stood on end when you traced patterns on me,
sending shivers, pollen-dusted footfalls, hundreds of honey bees.

I responded to you
like a long-fallow field
to a plow.

Jennifer Miyakawa is a recent graduate of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, with a degree in English and Creative Writing. Currently, she is assistant-managing a five-acre organic vegetable farm in the Swannanoa River Valley just east of Asheville. When not writing and farming, Jennifer dedicates her time to amateur mycology, step dancing, and ursine studies.

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