Plum Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) | Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison Contemporary Arts Center

Plum Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)

Your body should be mute
as this globed fruit
in a hollow of leaves
heavy and red.

What you wish
sometimes
when the night draws deep
is for someone else
to be able to hear you.

What you wish sometimes
is for anyone else
to lay a hand
across your back and feel
its thrumming.

It is either pain
or the absence of pain
that defines you. You forget
sometimes how to
tell the difference
between stem and root. 

Your body should be
a part
of the world, or
the world should be a part
of your body. You forget 

sometimes how to tell
the difference
between pulp and skin.
Both over so soon,
so sweet.

About the Author

Ellen Samuels

Ellen Samuels is a queer disabled poet and professor in the departments of Gender and Women’s Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Winner of two Lambda Literary Awards, her most recent creative publications include a verse memoir, Hypermobilities published this year by The Operating System, and poems and prose in Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Brevity, Rogue Agent, and Mid-American Review. Find her on twitter @ehlastigirl.


April 2021

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