Linda M. Fischer: “Fruit Fright”

FRUIT FRIGHT

Harboring a cache of faux fruit all these years
I call luscious and they could break my teeth
with one bite were I to be seduced by their soft
contours which was why I bought a batch
somewhere in the Mojave in spite of leaner
days—fresh out of school then the babies
and lots of tuna noodle casseroles—packed
them away and said my reluctant farewells
for the greener pastures of Pennsylvania
homesteading in suburbia if not the white
picket fence very close to it without the chore
of having to check our shoes for black widows
or scorpions and snakes only the garden variety
my children growing into men’s and women’s
sizes coming to visit now and then for dinner
which takes me to the footed ceramic cake plate
I found at a local gallery and my kitchen table
whereupon it sat topped elegantly with the fruit
as décor until my daughter-in-law lending a hand
went to lift it thinking the pieces attached only
to have the lot begin to shift—and oh the fright!

Linda M. Fischer’s poems have appeared in a variety of journals: Atlanta Review, Blue Heron Review, Ibbetson Street, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Iodine Poetry Journal, Poetry East, Potomac Review, Roanoke Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Worcester Review, and the recent anthology Art Through the Eyes of Mad Poets, An Ekphrastic Poetry Collection among others. She won the 2019 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference Poetry Contest and last year also published her third chapbook, Passages, with The Orchard Street Press.

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