Robin Gow
Robin Gow grew up and lives in rural Pennsylvania and earned their MFA from Adelphi University where they taught as an adjunct professor.
Gow runs the trans & queer reading series Gender Reveal Party and is the author of the chapbook HONEYSUCKLE by Finishing Line Press and the collection OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL DEGENERACY by Tolsun Books.
these orchards**
when i was 6 & 7 &8 & maybe even 9/10, mom & i picked fruit for each season—metal mixing bowls of cherries—shoe boxes of blueberries & orange buckets of apples—all sorts of apples (i always wanted a variety) macintosh, golden delicious, granny smith (just for the novelty of tartness) & honey crisp to remind ourselves what it would taste like if we were quick enough to reach up & take a bite out of the sun—warm juice dripping down elbows—
i love to ponder the unanswerable nuances of my grandmother—if her forearms were ever
sticky from a fist of nectarine or if there was an orchard nearby where her mother &
her might pick apples—
did she lick her hands clean & wipe them on the front of her dress?
somewhere in the process of trying to remember her i stopped asking who she was
& started asking who i needed her to be
did she slice apples into feathers or did she eat all the way through the core—seeds & all?
I do that—i plant apple trees in my rib cage where they can’t do any harm—their branches aching against my chest—
your family is not always what you need them to be
christmas this year mom put apples in my stocking—i felt their weight before peering inside—wine sap skinned—a dull scar-tissue red with hints of green—
i thought instantly of reaching for a ripe fruit in October—the sun setting
on the side of the mountain as a breeze laughed through the orchard—
metaphors are often self-inflicted
“why do you write so much about the past like it was sad?” mom asks next to me on the sofa.
i don’t really have an answer—
i know i sometimes remember us wrong
but i know we picked blueberries in shoe boxes because
the cardboard is still stained in the cupboard—
i know that sometimes i remember my grandmother wrong—
the type of resurrection i’ve made for her is meant to exist between us—i’m not interested in turning her photographs over again & again—tracing the archways in her eyebrows
& standing in their shadow—her body a cathedral for me to pray myself under—
all my life my aunts have only ever talked about my grandmother’s death—
this is me planting us an orchard to pick fruit in—
this is me making family against their will
what did she think the sun tasted like?
**from West Trade Review, Volume 10, Spring 2019
©2019 West Trade Review
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