Not to Be Confused with “Poem”

            As the Pome:
I could ask my petaled voice to cup its first and last notes against the hive’s collapse.

            As the Pome:
I could ask my scent to bud in the noses of passersby, could get a heart or two leaping for the season
            inside me.

            As the Pome:
I could ask the strange hands of the wind to play my pale pink beautiful all afternoon.

            As the Pome:
I could ask the kingdom of my blooming to ripen around a small number of promises called
            tomorrow.

            As the Pome:
I could ask my hanging on to look like your questions between prayer and faith.

            As the Pome:
I could ask you kindly not to salivate at the miracle I have yet to finish.

            As the Pome:
I could ask each hard thing beneath me to make the fall of my shine seem insufferable.

            As the Pome:
I could ask the knowledge my body is to taste like you testing your fate.

            As the Pome:
I could ask my plummet through your thinking to rename what you believe has held this world
            together.

            As the Pome:
I could ask safely to be of your eye now, having survived every green reason to wait.

            As the Pome:
I could ask the arrow that takes me off a steadied brow to fill this place with wonder.

            As the Pome:
I could ask my browning flesh to set the wild air humming for rot.

            As the Pome:
I could ask my before and after images to barely speak the same desire.

Copyright © 2024 by Geffrey Davis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 25, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“I admire that Shakespeare soliloquy wherein Juliet thinks through her family-beef-love problem as if it were a language problem: ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.’ I find Juliet’s defiance compelling and convenient. That is, until I think about loss, how what I’m willing to admit about painful experience can get mired by the titles involved, making Juliet’s art of unfinished understanding seem as challenging as it is worthy. This poem started at the kitchen sink, washing an apple for my son’s lunch, wanting to feel a little brighter.”
—Geffrey Davis