
Terhi K. Cherry
November 2022

Terhi K. Cherry’s work appears in SWWIM Every Day, TIMBER, Rogue Agent, Literary Mama, Cultural Weekly, Un(mother) anthology & film, and elsewhere. Her poem “Driving Through Death Valley” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Cultural Daily, and her debut chapbook “Feed It to the River” is available from Moon Tide Press in 2022. Terhi lives in Los Angeles and facilitates poetry for personal growth.
When Your Aging Mother Reveals
Her Endometriosis in Passing
You never thought to pull up
the roots & look what you carried
from your mother,
because all the flowers she planted
bloomed & you watched
as she arranged perennials in soil,
gently untangling the knots, always,
such knowledge in her hands;
you grew up believing,
little girls are made of geranium,
chrysanthemum, & alstroemeria,
& when you tried to grow them,
spreading the root balls in the hole
in the ground, you watched
as they died in the sun,
each flower dropped their necks;
you never thought of lichen,
on dead wood & tombstones,
wrapping around your wombs,
how your mother hushed up
those rosette patterns on rocks
& boulders; how she looked,
doubled over in pain;
never thought it climbs up so silent,
that crusty growth on red cedar tree;
the only clue, your flowers,
hosta leaves turning yellow,
until she drops
the name of your beast.
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When Cleopatra Lost Her Kingdom, She Ate a Fig
​
after Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber’s film,
Pieces of a Woman
She doesn’t fight, drives
her man to the harbor,
the passenger door shuts
like the last word.
At home, a ripe fig forgotten
in the fruit bowl,
one that Eve had plucked
instead of an apple,
the bud opening a teardrop,
the size of her thumb.
She thinks of the flesh,
how tender the skin
soaked in water,
how sweet the last bite;
recalls the baby
descending in the canal
of her body like
to a creek,
the unmistakable urge
to push,
the blue velvet skin
turning to violet.
Sees it clearly now,
like the day staring
behind the open blinds,
how he drinks in a cheap room,
slips a fifty
into a stranger’s bra,
pulls that girl
into his saddened lap.
Recalls the eyes
that hardly opened,
hands cupping the face
in the bath.
Was this acceptance –
he against a stranger’s ribs,
she alone with a fig?
And what it would be like
to knock the bowl over,
squash the fig gently
under her foot,
release the sweet flesh
from the purple skin?