by Beth Williams
Cherry Picking
She covered every lock of hair
with a hood on her walk
through the woods. Not even
a single curl poked through.
Her eyes how wide, her lips
unpainted, parted just slight
enough for breath to whistle.
Even beneath the cape
she shouted frail, weight
nearly too much to carry.
Her gait defined her age,
part skip and stumble
over bare knuckled roots.
She was the lone burst
of color, cherry red
against a forest sky.
I picked her like fruit
knowing I could choke,
my tongue making a knot
of her stem while the cage
of my teeth held her calm.
Beth Oast Williams’s poetry has been accepted for publication in Leon Literary Review, SWWIM Everyday, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER, Fjords Review, and Rattle's Poets Respond, among others. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.