Persimmons

Ann Fisher-Wirth

My sister said, I would like to write
about these persimmons but I can’t

because I died. Along the street
they hung, glossy and taut among the leaves,

all of light in their red-orange flesh,
like breasts, like buttocks or wombs

swollen with sun, with desire,
those sexy fruits that she loved,

on this radiant All Souls’ morning
when she returned to walk with me.

Ann Fisher-Wirth’s sixth book of poems is The Bones of Winter Birds. Mississippi, her fifth, is a poetry/photography collaboration with Maude Schuyler Clay. With Laura-Gray Street, Ann coedited The Ecopoetry Anthology. A senior fellow of Black Earth Institute, she was 2017 poet-in-residence at Randolph College, and has had numerous residencies as well as Fulbrights to Switzerland and Sweden. A professor of English, she directs the environmental studies program at the University of Mississippi.