Sample Poems by Gina Ferrara

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The Rarities of Green


Two kiwis are in my bag.
I've picked the unbruised
for you to try, halved,
oblong, down the center,
to tropical ovals, beneath
thin indigene skin
that separates so easily
when urged.

The insides are darker
than peridot, you tell me,
lighter than emerald,
and somewhere within
your spectrum of gems,
is the rarest,
the ripened green.



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Blood Orange


Your fingers pull away
blood orange rind
for me to swallow
a seedless fury
of flesh.

Venal sweetness,
peeled and shared,
our darkest shade of sunset.

Nothing is still.

I am a ravenous bird
devouring the blaze of blood
orange hemispheres
from both sides of your blade.

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Wrought and Replicating

Inspired by the musicality of veins
and arteries,
I keep this poem within.
I breathe and it writes itself
near tissues, cells and familiar red fluid.
The pulse is the steadiest muse.
Last night, I dreamed a pair of herons
lifted the lines then carried them
to the island where you are.
When the sun rose,
you read what was left,
a language of double helixes,
wrought and replicating,
left on the rocks to dry.

---

Near Macon

We pick the ripest harbingers of light,
and those even on the cusp,
promises cupped, fecund and fallen
scooped from the ground,
placed in a plywood crate.
Wood splinters with abandon
like dandelions in March.
Skins nearly burst
in scarlet-tinged tantrums
almost purple without burdens
of blood vessels or ventricles,
dense eternities of flesh before stone.
Across three states
we drove on an impulse
to gather and glean
craved fruit not found in Eden.