My Daughter Asks for a Pomegranate
The Fare Forward Poetry Competition: Third Place
By Rachel E. Hicks
At first I hurried: cut the fruit in half
the wrong direction, used a spoon to scoop
out seeds that scattered everywhere; the fruit
resisted my untrained advance. I laughed
and slowed my pace and settled to the task:
thumbs coaxing gently through the sponge to root
the arils out (I threw aside the spoon).
Contented, mesmerized, I hunted, basked
in hidden glory bursting forth, that stained
my fingertips, the cutting board, the bowl.
The fleshy mesocarp lay broken, slain—
until just then I hadn’t cared to know
how slow love is, and what the parts are named.
Rachel E. Hicks’s poetry has appeared in Ekstasis, Anglican Theological Review, The Baltimore Review, Relief, St. Katherine Review, Gulf Stream, and other journals. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she won the 2019 Briar Cliff Review Fiction Prize, and her poems have been finalists in several competitions. She is editor of Among Worlds magazine, an associate editor at Del Sol Press, and a freelance copyeditor. A global nomad who has lived in seven countries, she explores themes of displacement, worldview, and connection in her writing. Find her online at rachelehicks.com.
