BELLFRUIT / Simon Avery

I clomb the—well, the wall—what was a wall—
of a ruined church just slouching by the way,
and gripping where the mortar’d failed the stones
I caught the bell’s attendant chain, and pulled,

showering the whole forsaken valley
with a ripe and spacious fruit, wide, heavy, fruit,

(just as, an hour before, by stairs of stone,
I shook some apple boughs above my wife,
that she could catch the boughthest fruits,
for I could not without falling).

The author of two chapbooks, Crow Lungs (2013), and In Modica the Gargoyle (2019), Simon Avery is a well-on-his-way poet and writer and SAT tutor from Cleveland, OH. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Kenyon Review.