I peel a quiet fruit while walking
into a mean southern wind;
I pretend I am a traveling massif,
grassy but strangely human.
Moist and sensational,
the fruit tendrils
adhere to my thumbs
like ridiculous little tails.
Amplifying its particled self,
the wind shoves the fruit
from my hand and asks me where I was
before God put on my bones.

_______________________________________

Seth Berg snagged an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University in 2003 and has been teaching composition and other tasty stuff ever since. His poems have appeared in Connecticut Review, Lake Effect, Chiron Review, JMWW, 13th Warrior Review, BlazeVOX, and Stitches as well as others. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with his rawkin’ photographer wife and their ten-year-old English Bulldog, Bob.

We Like Our Single Serving Friends

We return to the East Coast and leave behind the cozy confines of vacation. Vashon Island and Seattle are impressive. Jet lag and delayed planes are not. However, so many idle airport hours present plenty of catch up time for our reading. We looked around and identified copious copies of Dan Brown’s latest novel, and on the TV screens plenty of football players danced about, but Al Jazeera, Robert Kaplan’s favorite station, was conspicuously absent. We read in the New Yorker of executed prisoner Todd Willingham’s tragic story, which we are growing more accustomed to: Law enforcement taking too long to come around to important evidence. Teddy Kennedy memorial issues lined the Sea-Tac Airport, although said magazines did not endorse him as a Victorian protagonist. Finally, the Sydney Morning Herald debate between Art and Darwinism is a fascinating conversation. Go read it while we catch up on sleep.  – Andrew Geer

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