Rhonda Lott
Cherry Stories
I.
I found the goldfinches’
legs
hard and skyward
in the cherry tree’s
shade
because my mother
and I could not pick
every fresh or fallen
drupe for preserves
before the birds’
gizzards
ground cyanide
from the stones.
II.
Even if Washington
could not tell a lie,
the man who sold his
cherry story did.
III.
Ax to throat, I would
confess,
the mother under the
cherry tree was not my own
but another dust-blond
divorcee
I fear no one would
care to hear about.
IV.
The birds that died
among those red globes
could have been any
birds.
I only know that pits
are sometimes poison,
that finches sometimes
eat them,
that gold glows holy
next to molding crimson,
that finches are not
as bathetic as bluebirds,
as common as robins,
nor as oblique as
evening grosbeaks,
which are also known
to eat cherry stones.
V.
What’s the weight
of a cherry stone?
I could tell you another
story about swallowing
a stray pit, but it
takes at least six
to make people sick.
VI.
And maybe you hate
birds
because they shriek
next to the dumpster
before dawn.
Maybe you hate cherry
trees
because they litter
your yard
and attract tourists.
Maybe you hate George
Washington
because you love entangling
alliances.
Maybe you hate mothers.
VII.
I want to tell of
cherry blossoms,
but haiku tell them
better.
I want to walk through
orchards,
but Chekhov walked
them better.
I want to sing of
virgins,
but all I have are
stones.
VIII.
Ask yourself how you
prefer the lie.
Either the birds or
the tree had to die.
Rhonda
Lott received her master's degree in creative writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi
and is currently a doctoral candidate at Texas Tech University. Her previous
work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, The Los Angeles Review, Cream City Review, The Southern
Humanities Review, and more. She also serves as an associate editor and
artist-in-residence for Stirring: A Literary Collection.
