RUTH MADIEVSKY

Tell Me


about the time we stole pears in Surprise, Arizona
                      and let cornfields undress us
           in Assumption, Illinois
There were terra cotta armies in our hearts
           We listened 
                      to the shell’s mouth
And tell me how the day poured its honey
           over everything, and after, 
the memory of everything
           How we wore our skin like a question
There was lidocaine, yes, and apples
                      from the cemetery
           And tell me how our tea danced
to the tides of the moon
                      How I got sick
           That I got better
Leave out the part 
           about the air being toxic,
how it opened us
                      like figs
           Tell me instead
about my eyes
                      under the ponderosa tree
           What was it you called them?
Red wine
           on a shard of glass


  
147 The Paris-American

Originally from Kishinev, Moldova, Ruth Madievsky lives and writes in Los Angeles. She studied creative writing and biology at the University of Southern California, where she received the Edward W. Moses Creative Writing Prize for fiction and the Phi Kappa Phi Student Recognition Award for her poetry chapbook-in-progress. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO Poetry, The MacGuffin, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, and Atticus Review. She is a graduate student at USC's School of Pharmacy. 

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  Next week's poet:

 Casey Thayer