share


Fig-tree

He trepans with the blunt

screwdriver on his penknife:

unripe figs require the touch

of air on flesh to sweeten.

Blind, but in his fingertips

he has the whole knot

of this fig-tree memorised.

 

The five inch scar, a vague

felt mesh of parallelogram,

was where he bandaged up

a split branch once.

He starts from there,

first hand-height fruit

and then he gets the ladder.

 

Gauge weight, turn, unturn.

He sings beneath his breath

about the excellence of figs,

their mellowness,

their skin-dints

like the perfect undulation

in the small of his wife’s back.

 


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

was born in 1986. He is currently completing a PhD at Durham University. His poetry has featured in the Salt Book of Younger Poets and Best British Poetry 2012. His first collection, Antler, was published by Salt in 2012.

READ NEXT

Art

February 2013

Haitian Art and National Tragedy

Rob Sharp

Art

February 2013

Thousands of Haiti’s poorest call it home: Grand Rue, a district of Port-au-Prince once run by merchants and bankers,...

Interview

Issue No. 1

Interview with Tom McCarthy

Fred Fernandez Armesto

Interview

Issue No. 1

For those expecting him to be, as the New Statesman called him, ‘the most galling interviewee in Britain’, Tom...

fiction

May 2016

See Inside for Holiday Special

Joanna Quinn

fiction

May 2016

We are not tourists. We are journalists. We fly out from Heathrow, Bristol, Glasgow and Newcastle to foreign airports...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required