Allisa Cherry
Selected Poems
Allisa Cherry
Thrown
Out by the dry irrigation ditch,
muscles twitching away the deer flies,
the mare smelled of sweat,
grain-laced. Broken the year before,
the fault was in the way I rode her.
She was uninvolved in her
body’s desire to throw me.
And now you—my bright-faced
daughter—no longer call out to me.
I am a nun contemplating
the empty cup of servitude.
I am a rider tumbled
in the wild mustard, guessing
how I could have done better.
Tristeza. Saddled up la pena.
Hold on to me. I only wanted
to be a person in this world
that never tried to rein her in.
Allisa Cherry
Fourteen Lines About Love
Love is in the next room sleeping. Love has morning breath. I’m starving
but I will wait to start breakfast until Love scratches its hairy belly and
smacks its lips. Love is still in recovery and quick to anger. Yesterday
I went with Love to the Japanese garden. I wore the wrong shoes for the weather
and every photo Love took of me was a bad one. I’m not getting any younger.
Love, I remember, once hid its paycheck so it could spend the whole thing
on liquor. I was pregnant by Love. Swollen and afraid of Love leaving my life
for good. The rent was due and Love made me act like a bitch. Looking back
I can admit Love has written the cruelest chapters of my biography. Once,
Love even cowered in the corner of a hospital room so Rage had to step in
to deliver Love’s daughter (which is why she has always been like this).
Still, it was Love that poured the Epsom salt and drew the warm baths after,
wouldn’t listen when I banished it from my kitchen, got underfoot. Everywhere
I looked, Love kept adding more herbs to the salad and another bone to the broth.
Allisa Cherry is the author of An Exodus of Sparks (Michigan State University Press) and the 2024 recipient of the Wheelbarrow Books poetry prize (RCAH Center for Poetry). Her work has appeared in journals such as The McNeese Review, TriQuarterly, The Baltimore Review, and The Penn Review. She currently lives in Oregon where she teaches workshops for immigrants and refugees transitioning to a life in the U.S. and serves as a poetry editor for West Trade Review.
