Peaches Poem

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. At the Literary Festival and Writers Conference in San Miguel de Allende, this year, I heard a luminous reading by the poet Sandra Cisneros, who’s a Mexican-American writer.

And I gathered up a bunch of her books and brought them home with me, and I’ve been reading a lot of her poetry, and I wanted to share a poem with you. It’s about peaches, and it’s called Peaches, Six in a Tin Bowl, Sarajevo.

If peaches had arms, surely they would hold one another in their peach sleep.

And if peaches had feet, it is sure they would nudge one another with their soft peachy feet.

And if peaches could, they would sleep with their dimpled head on the others each to each.

Like you and me.

And sleep.

And sleep.

And that’s it.

And one of the things I love about this poem is that she does so much with a bowl of fruit, just like William Carlos Williams and the plums.

And the other thing that I love about it is that it makes me smile, literally.

It has all those E sounds like peaches and me and sleep and feet.

And I can’t help but smile when I read it.

You think that the E sound is stretching your face into a smile?

Yes, yes.

You just continue on with the real smile.

Yes, it’s not an easy poem to read, but when I finish, my cheeks are sore.

Interesting.

As brief as it is.

Yeah.

Sandra Cisneros, and it’s called again?

It’s called Peaches, Six in a Tin Bowl, Sarajevo, and it’s from the collection My Wicked, Wicked Ways by Sandra Cisneros, published by Vintage Books and used with the author’s permission.

All rights reserved.

Thank you, Martha.

That was wonderful.

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