Market Women

Market women in Wajima (Japan), July 1998 / © I.A. Daglis

Lumbering down
in the early morning clatter
from farms
where the earth was hard all winter,
the market women bear
grapes blue as the veins
of fair-skinned women,
cherries dark as blood,
roses strewn like carnage
on makeshift altars
Erica Jong [Fruits and Vegetables, 1971]