orchard iBy Nicole Oquendo
in an orchard where the trees tote other fathers / in tidy rows / all the fathers, from the small to the wide fathers / in the eighth row, fourth from the front, a father whose smile does not show teeth / in the back, a single father bends a branch, and buttons on his shirt catch the light
beyond the buckets of overripe fathers / near the shears / a father rots / in the back of the packing shed / and will never raise his hands |
self-portrait as shearsBy Nicole Oquendo
metal sharp and covered / by their hands / all the girls at once answering / what would be worse / to have no father, or have this father / squeezing down, force on the pivot / until another father’s head / separates / from the tree that bore it / blood along the cutting edge of me
blades grind while they pinch and pinch / all the girls / dresses soiled, leaves in hair / leaves crunching beneath their bare feet ////// prune / the fathers that are left detail of fruit rottingBy Nicole Oquendo
in the shed / near his tools, in a similar arrangement / to the one in a house where a father grew before / a father melts against the news that clipped him / while the shears rust elsewhere / and will settle into the floorboards
detail of a shedBy Nicole Oquendo
rain above the orchard comes down red
and spills along the leaves, down branches lifting fathers tall, raised above the soil and the shed, where the red taps against the roof, and vibrates down through the shovels and the rakes and the broom and the bucket, and rotten fathers resting taped as well, under water, near shears stuck upright by the roots. detail of cuttingBy Nicole Oquendo
the orchard / in the distance burning / is small against the backdrop of the whole night sky / lit by the fire / and the moon / in all its phases hanging high / where smoke can’t reach / but we can grasp it / between our fingers, and if we squint / narrow our vision to a different kind / of brightness / and hope hard / against the light that’s left / stars will reveal their hands / as a tarot to be read / and wished against
detail of basketsBy Nicole Oquendo
in the shed, fathers rest,
sheared, among the dirt and twigs, surrounded by wood reaching from joist to rafter, rounded skins pressed together in the baskets where they lie until the worms arrive. Nicole Oquendo is a writer, editor, educator, and visual artist. Their work can be found in numerous literary journals, a hybrid memoir, and six chapbooks, including their most recent works: Space Baby: Episodes I-III and The Antichrist and I. They are currently an Assistant Editor for Sundress Publications, and their most recently curated anthology, Manticore: Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identities, is available for free from Sundress Publications. You can find Nicole on Twitter: @nicoleoq.
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