/brenna womer

a liberation

i. a lime that is ripe and left unpicked belongs to the one who picks it

and when nobody picks the limes from the alley tree of the ruined house on tulip, i take them for myself; ripeheavy, dim citrus breaks the back of its elastic grace; it begs

ii. a palmetto bug is a cockroach when it is crawling in your bed

soft-white light through a window at the rear, exposed bulb and pull string above café curtains; either one person or twelve live inside, and maybe once a baby; pink highchair dirty plastic fisher price on the porch, i make a bowl of my shirt the first time, yes, the first time

iii. do not forget to draw a map back to your source of rampant yielding

across the street still on tulip a splinter of a house with a sign out front and no tenants just cicadas on the mailbox; everything overgrown, but the tree out front is fucking studded; it’s hung as shit with pale pith, and maybe this is how it feels to be rich: too much to pick or, at least, too much to carry.

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Brenna Womer is a prose writer, poet, and professor in flux. She’s the author of honeypot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and two chapbooks, Atypical Cells of Undetermined Significance (C&R Press, 2018) and cost of living (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in North American Review, Indiana Review, DIAGRAM, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Shenandoah and a contributing editor for Story Magazine.