Womxn’s History Month Special Issue Poetry Runner Up: “Claiming Honey”
By Sayuri Ayers
My mother knows how
to choose the best: the ones
with smooth pale skin.
She presses a honeydew
to her cheek, closing her eyes.
She listens to its song— the river
cradled within its rind.
Bringing the melon home,
my mother whets a blade, plunging
into pale flesh. She seizes
a crescent, fat as a quarter
moon. Between her teeth,
the flesh sings—gleaming seeds,
boats upon the Pearl River.
In the stories she tells me,
a girl weeps in a classroom closet,
her hand stung by a ruler,
a slap for each English word
muddled by a small tongue.
In the musty darkness,
she imagines of her father’s store,
the melons nestled in rough crates.
She reaches for their cool rinds
to soothe her branded palms.
My mother gave me
an English name, but calls me
Little Lily. The brush-stroked
characters open softly
on rice paper, unfurling
like vine-tendrils.
When the other children
slant their eyes and jeer,
my mother places my hand
on smooth green skin.
She shows me how
to wield the blade, to cleave
the full moon. Seizing flesh
between our teeth, we devour
honey from its rind.
About the author:
Sayuri Ayers is a native of Columbus, Ohio. Her prose and poetry appear in The Account, Entropy, SWWIM, Hobart, The Pinch, and other literary journals. She is the author of two chapbooks: Radish Legs, Duck Feet (Green Bottle Press) and Mother/Wound (forthcoming from Full/Crescent Press.) Sayuri is a Kundiman Fellow and VCCA Resident. In 2020, she was awarded the Ohio Arts Council's Individual Excellence Award in creative writing. You can find her at sayuriayers.com.
