Dawn and Dead Cherries

Smacks of light as pieces of morning
assemble. Dawn turns it all Pangea.
In a nearby field, the cherry trees
go dizzy with their own sweet juice,
get drunk on their own bloodstream.

The children are out. Scooping up
what falls to the ground. Soon they
are bloated with skins and lipstain.
The bottoms of their shoes stomping
out the ones not good enough to eat.

Nearby, their mothers are waking, too.
Shuffling the cards like every morning.
Good day, bad day. Meanwhile, the swell
of the sun becoming a ball. The shrivel of dead
cherries on the ground, flat as unspent coins.

February 5, 2020
  •  
Poetry

Francine Witte

Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections, Café Crazy and The Theory of Flesh from Kelsay Books. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologized in the most recent New Micro (W.W. Norton) Her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind has just been published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her full-length collection of flash fiction, Dressed All Wrong for This was recently published by Blue Light Press. She lives in New York City.

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