Fruity Competition by Kate Firth

 


 

Formerly an actress, Kate Firth is a voice coach based in Barcelona. She has had poems published in various anthologies and magazines. Passionate about poetry as an oral as well as written tradition, she has performed at Bristol, Cheltenham and Winchester poetry festivals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1: Blackberry

 

I could be a black fruit poem:

richness of darkest choicest blackberry ripe,

juicy my tongue,

liquid Blueberry Delight with billberry.

 

A wilderness of bramble and thorn

a wicked thicket

enticing my wild dark words

with fleshy mellow flavour.

 

Rounding my mouth,

swelling my lips, staining

my fingers, my tongue,

guiltlessly shamelessly

announcing my appetite

for purple, for blue

and for you. 

 

One word of me is not enough

you will want more

and more and one more

and just, perhaps,

one more. 

 

You will come with fingers ready,

with buckets and with your children

and you will love me. 

 

I will hide me in hedgerow,

and your children will find me

love me

and eat me before I am ready to ripe me.

 

And many times you’ll walk right past me

because you’ve forgotten

 

I am free for the picking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2: Mango

 

I could mango my words with exotic twist

and tang and peel and stone and sucking stone

and hair and watering tongue and lick and dissolve

to sugar your flesh.

 

Mango with southern scent of Mexico, India, Africa

so sweet within one skin

to outwit your blue blackberry dark forest competition. 

 

I will win with mango slow go,

just wait for me to ripen, wait

 

for my words to arrive and surprise

and startle your eyes awide

and awaken your mind with tease and touch

and soft and silken sticky my caress.

 

Hold you my heaviness,

heavy my juice and catch me peel me

catch my liquid juicy in your cup,

slice me through or suck me whole,

but unpeel me first,

pierce me through my leather my skin my leathery skin

but wait for me first for my ripen

or I will not surprise and pleasure you. 

 

Wait,

for my ripening

to drop from branch

onto your sunlit sill. 

                 

 

 

Kate Firth

 

The Yew Speaks On St Brigid’s Day by Kate Firth

Crackington Haven on New Year’s Eve by Kate Firth

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Poems