Lily Holloway
We all know what the bruised fruit means
I have not kept my garden plot, it is overrun with deadly nightshade
and tall wiry lettuce which I did not know could blossom this way
I bought the seedlings but I did not mother them and now
the nightshade berry is squished between the concrete
and my birkenstock. In smug summer, the dried stems rattle
a warning, wasps emerging from dropped and rotting
grapefruit. I have intrusive thoughts about goblins grabbing overripe
drupes and forcing them up against my bared teeth. Feel the flesh
give way to the stone, let it crack against enamel. You kissed stickiness
from dimples like a fly I wasn’t quick enough to smack.
A girl, a post-holiday fruit bowl
I remember cape gooseberries in lace lanterns and the envelopes
full of poppy seed. I remember lying in the orchard, stomach glutted
with feijoas. I remember stained fingers and the bowl of Christmas
cherry pits. I remember earning my halo of flies. I remember Mansfield
and the moonlit pear tree. I remember becoming the restless brook
I remember emerging from my golden crisping exoskeleton. I remember
the green worm rescued from raspberry, laying in the crescent of my nail bed
I remember the worm burrowing into the flesh of my thumb. I remember
my hand a grapefruit. I remember the holes multiplying. I remember
the wasps emerging from my body in the dead of night.
Built like she was
Always found it hard to sing that bit of the song: She wasn’t too bright
But I could tell when she kissed me / She knew how to get her kicks
because I’d imagine how pissed I’d be if someone wrote a song about how
I was incredible in bed but also remarkably stupid, to the point where it was almost
paradoxical, to the point where one might question my ability to discern
which was the Four Square’s entry and which was its exit and my ability
to dress appropriately for the weather. I dragged my last boyfriend around
all of the small-town op-shops but he never threw me on the back of his bike
probably because he only had a dying nissan and perpetually sweaty palms
I imagine swinging all of my ex-boyfriends up onto the back of my bike
and they each look terribly put upon. I imagine shoving an old beret on their heads
and pulling it down over their ears. You don’t want to get cold, I say, it’s overcast
and I am going to ride this bike very very fast. They look like silly french gnomes
but they put up with it because they really want to fuck me in a barn.
Lily Holloway (they/her) is a trench coat full of ladybugs. Their work can be found in places such as AUP New Poets 8, Cordite, Peach Mag, Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ New Zealand Writers, and various other nooks and crannies. They are one of six poets selected to start an MFA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University in New York this August.