Fruit picking
- Dec 8, 2021
- 1 min read
by Jake Phillips
We take the back roads, point out the windows at reds and yellows, the arch of autumn guiding us to the orchard. Let’s buy a bag at the store, pretend
we drove the hour — but no, you say, it’s just
not the same. So we go, get a half peck bag and wander the hills and fields, get lost questing for Fuji and Gala, and I subject us all to a day’s worth of gay-la jokes. Soft
and steady, we are not. We knock a ton of fruit loose, take down whole branches to grab the biggest and the best. I hoist you up to hunt higher and the kids nearby stop to cheer, clap
for us, for this tower of two clumsy gay men. Us here, like this: I’m glad we didn’t pretend.
Jake Phillips is a current poetry MFA candidate and creative writing instructor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His work has previously been published in Writers Resist, Response: A Journal for New Work, and Poetry Online and is forthcoming in Write on the DOT Volume 6.
