She is large with grief and her belly is full of bees that sting from the
inside out. Her hair streams behind her like a faucet of warm running
honey has become her head. It has formed a creek where the children
scoop handfuls to their mouths, and the ants carry them off. Her hands
make a basket for flowers that grow out of the creases where dirt has
collected. She would like to scream but her mouth has become a
honeycomb, her teeth and tongue coated in golden duress.
~ from small fruit songs
Praise for small fruit songs:
Like bees extracting pollen, Cati Porter has found the rich and mysterious nourishment of the things in front of us, the poetry in plain view. In deceptively simple language, she startles us into insights. We’re presented with a delightfullly off-kilter world where a woman weds a tree while “the wind administers vows,” where another woman, “large with grief and belly full of bees,” would like to scream but finds “her mouth has become a honeycomb, her teeth and tongue coated in golden duress.” Small fruit songs is nothing short of delicious.”
– Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Unmentionables (W.W. Norton, 2008)
Your chapbook came and I am enjoying it. I want to congratulate you on being a very strange person - and I mean that seriously and in the best possible way. I think the slanted eye and sensibilities that can write Frugal and False Fruit are compelling and even necessary. I applaud anyone who loves words enough to look them up - and give us etymologies but your Fructify goes beyond that to give us “Her hands make a basket for flowers that grow out of the creases where dirt has collected.” Hurray for you.
-- Deborah Bogen, author of Landscape with Silos (Texas Review Press, 2005)
What others have to say about small fruit:
small fruit songs in the Chapbook Spotlight on Diane Lockward’s Blogalicious
Bridget Kelly-Lossada’s Dreams of Trespass
Mary Alexandra Agner’s Pantoums & Persistence