Poems & Publications Cassi W. Nesmith
October: The Wrong Orange Season - a hai-bun
originally published in Play and Tattle
A 'zine by Cassi W. Nesmith
In the backyard of the house my parents rented in a Sacramento suburb, lived an orange tree. The fruit was abundant and sweet at its peak. One of my most treasured memories was picking the fruit with my large and growing family. I loved the smell of the ripe oranges, and cherished my dad picking me up to reach the top of the tree. I climbed the ladder to get up even higher, something my older brother was too scared to do. The first time I made it to the highest rung, I felt so brave. I was about to leap off the top step of the ladder, and shouted,
“Watch me!” “Stop!” My Dad
yelled and ran toward me fast,
I jumped in his arms.
I was bold and boisterous, but for me to even eat the oranges,
I needed a grown-up
to break into the peel to
“open it”, so
my tiny hands
could dig in my dirty nails
and peel the orange
That was the stickiest way to eat the juicy oranges, and we had to take off our shirts and eat it outside. What I liked better was my mom slicing the oranges into smiles. We sucked the juice out of those smiles, then opened our little mouths, showing off our new orange dentures.
One autumn day, my friend, Jennifer P., all of my friends were named Jennifer, came to my house. We were kindergarteners, left unsupervised in the backyard. And why not? The yard was confined by a tall brick fence. We had no dogs to bite us, we were independent enough to walk home from school with friends. We didn’t need
A pregnant mother
with a two year old toddler
watching over us.
In theory, we were old enough to know better.In theory, we were old enough to know better.
It was September, the tree popped with fruit and I wanted Jennifer to see what a good time looked like, so I brought out the great, plastic buckets in which we dropped the bright oranges. I explained about picking the fruit and we got to it. I picked the best oranges. Jennifer asked me if her choices were ripe. I’d feel it, squeeze it, and randomly declared about half of her choices fit for pickin’.
We twisted the stem
wrestling the oranges
into the bucket.
We were small, so we couldn’t work very fast, or do a thorough job. Even so, we managed to clear about ¾ of what we could reach before
my mother came out
jaw dropped — what had
we done
to the orange tree?
Well, I was wrong about ⅔ of Jennifer’s selections being ready and right about the others not. The fruit was
Yellow and tinged green
bitter and inedible
eternally sour.
We got in enough trouble for Jennifer to get sent home, but not until after my exhausted mother issued the consequences
The oranges we
picked off the tree would
not be sweet in the winter.
She didn’t do anything more to me than send me to the room my sister, Helen, and I shared. I stared,
Window wide open
once fruit laden, abundant now half bald tree.
I was sad for two reasons. I wouldn’t have very many oranges in the winter, and I was not the expert I thought I was.
It wouldn’t be the last time
I thought I knew everything
a persona poem
originally published in Begin Again
-Stories of Transformation.
A Glorious Song of Herself
The word “glorious” was originally derived from the Latin “blessed”
Glorious! Oh Glorious!
Here I stand, all seventy inches
All almost two hundred pounds
Smart, freckled (but not excessively so)
Once proudly breasted
now, having lived forty plus years
My body points southward,
a little hangover belly
Knees tend to buckle – all this originally
Glorious!
Once the kind of woman anyone
would want to bed, great curves
flat in places that I thought should be flat
now the only flat thing I have is the top of
my pate
Ah! But I am
Glorious
I’ll walk across a room that once required
A dress code – that is a room I’d be so self
conscious
To traverse. Now, I see the scars, the flab,
the mirror ,
Shows all this to me, the tufts of hair
growing, all this I see is ,
Glorious!
I do have shiny nails, toenails, like
little cherry tomatoes,
When I walk my stride is glorious, my toes
curl up and turn out,
Catch me from the corner of your eye and
you’ll get a queen in your sight
See her? She almost struts, she knows,
excuse me, I know
I am glorious and I hold my head wearing
nothing but a crown.
You see me, don’t you? Standing first,
walking towards you, walking away
My auburn hair in full abandon, I am, you
can see it, I am Glorious
I am my own delight. I am thoughtfulness,
compassion,
I am jittery, I am angry, perhaps a little
jealous.
I am before and after all these things, you
see ,
That I am glorious!
All this proves
Filled to the hilt magic and maligned
If you wait just one moment
you’d see for yourself careful
spilling out everywhere.
I. Am. Glorious!
Poets Expresso Review
See-Through Wings
Published by The Poet's Espresso Review (Forthcoming)
Yesterday afternoon we took three eggs
Scampered just around the corners
Behind the deadly oleanders,
Knowing full well it was wrong
Cracked the eggs on the neighbors’ sidewalk.
They did not fry and of course we got caught.
That was not why I was in my room.
We loved to catch Ladybugs.
Curtis Wayne, one of the red haired ones,
Showed us how to take their wings
He’d grab one, open his hand, wait until the ladybug was
about to fly away pinch the black see-through wings right off
And the ladybug was unable to fly.
Brilliant! I caught an orange bug and did it, too.
We all wanted the ladybugs to climb on our arms and never
fly away.
I was Faith’s hero.
Faith with the poofy black hair and freckles.
My mother came out to check on us
My brother on her hip
Faith ran and told my mom how wonderful I was with the beautiful bugs
And how I took their wings…
My mother’s face turned white, then red.
She gripped my brother tighter against her hip and with powerful restraint,
told me to come inside immediately.
I don’t remember everything she said,
But I remember her asking me if I wanted
Something bigger than me to tear off my arm
as she grabbed and twisted mine.
And that is what wound me up in my room
For the rest of the day, afternoon and night
Crying for myself
Crying for the poor ladybugs that could not fly their way home.
A Woman In d’Orsay
There is a sculpture in d’Orsay
Of a woman, lackadaisical and naked
With a simple, common name.
The world was scandalized!
Before, such erotic women were branded
Like Aphrodite or Salome, or Helen of Troy, not emboldened
And emblazoned with a living woman’s name
There couldn’t be, gulp, a real woman
So beautiful, so accessible, alive now?
A woman who was loved so carefully the sculpture
Was completely identifiable. It was she. She was his lover.
And there she is, right there – so beautiful, so easy, and so very distressing.
My mind remembers the scandal
But my heart does not know her name.
If I am Dead
If I am dead
I will not see him
Shopping carefully
Cumin seeds, garlic, the freshest greens
Gently aged cheeses, a single long vanilla bean
If I am dead
I will not see him
If I am dead
I will not see him
Picking a long red hair
Of mine out of his lunch box
Plucking it out of potato salad
Either playfully or disgustedly
If I am dead
I will not see him
If I am dead
I will not see him
Exhausted on his back
The dark haired beauty, wiggling into his arms
While he tries to sleep off whatever ecstasy she’s brought him
If I am dead
I will not see them.
