Susan Craig
January Jumbo Blueberries
Plump, blue-black,
near-cartoon iterations, you
fill the container like a family unit.
I’m suspicious as I pry back
the plastic top, label saying
Product of Mexico.
Are you safe? Are you sweet, lush,
approved like American-grown?
Sometimes I go picking in June,
rural blueberry farm with my friend.
We wear buckets strapped at
our waists, reach our hands into
sequestered niches to nab clusters
of near-bursting berries. We pop
them in mouths, searching row after
row walled by blueberry bushes.
In winter we reach
for our imports: Honduran bananas,
Peruvian asparagus, Chilean grapes
fat and seedless. How we love
you handpicked and delivered
to our grocery, our tables.
How we don’t want your faces
amongst us; even your littlest, most
tender, not quite dear enough
for American tastes.
Poems by Susan Craig have appeared in Kakalak, Mom Egg Review, The Collective I, Fall Lines, and Jasper, among other publications. A graphic designer by trade, she lives in Columbia, South Carolina.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.