Bear fruit
River Hollows

To yield positive results
to give birth to a child or the produce fruit or flowers of a tree
plants can bear flowers and fruit at the same time
a bear can be an animal, a large carnivorous mammal heavy, robust and hairy with plantigrade paws or,
a gay man. To bear can mean to tolerate or endure something unpleasant
to hold or carry with pleasurable possession fruit - the mature ovary of a flowering plant enclosing the seeds, the soft fleshy usually edible reproductive body,

a succulent plant part:            sweet     sour    water      milk              a gay person.

Danez Smith's poem Lesbian Time starts I can't tell if it moves like a river or a mountain
around the same time that I first hear this I am alerted to the theme of today's event places: touchstones that hold you
I read it as a declaration   places   touch   stones
an a stone be separate from the place it occupies, separate enough to touch?
a stone nestled beside the bodies of other stones
bearing one another in place while being place, becoming and creating at once
when you think of a river do you imagine water or stone first
is a river more water or place, more place or movement, movement
or pleasure stone fruit is characterized by a
fleshy edible part
surrounding a hard protective shell - the stone or pit that houses the seed, peaches
are known by their fuzzy skin and sweet juicy flesh
is this poem more fruit or fruits, bearing
or bears?
when I say mature animal, edible part, milky river I chose the name River because I wanted to remember when I have the honor of being in someone else's mouth
that this body is more water than stone that this
daughter can hairy and heavy and hold and carry fleshy parts can be tolerated but if they are not pleasurably possessed let them be offerings freely given
this body a stone to touch
for anyone engaged in toppling the wretched empire in 3 days
I will take this fruiting body these mature reproductive fruits
I’ll lift my shirt and say cut here and here, please and leave the soft fleshy parts on the table
will there be time enough
to count the rings beneath each trunk
she shucks
before sealing the seam
I'll make it as tight as I can she says
Yours are… a bit droopy, can I say
she wasn't asking
in the hall we are reminded with steady and unceasing invitations to again come home, come home to the breath and the body and the path who are you to say that I that we have not been a dewdrop
on the pudendal petals
of a peony the nutmeg
sweat bead dripping
down
the brow of
a murmuration of starlings above a prairie
at dusk, that we have not been dusk,
and black mold, acute and chronic myelogenous leukemia, the ash of a funeral pyre,
a burial mound, the chewing gum stuck to the underside of a desk, a whale, a thunder, a cockroach, a plum, a cantaloupe rind or cucumber seed at the base of a compost heap, if I,
in a previous life
could swell with water and grow a tail that cracked
my shell clean off and then
with curling vines in unfurling fists unearth myself
through limestone lead and sediment
climb walls and fences break bricks under the pressure of persistent emergent reaching towards the sun
it seems to me only fair
that we could all be expected to slough what we were and with wildness bold as brass surprise
with what we don't yet know in this lifetime
in this country I am responsible for the wellbeing of my body as it contorts and reshapes itself to stay alive under the circumstances, God willing let this life be something akin to a sunrise
the fruit I am responsible for in the house of my body has ripened. I'd like to give the flowers
a fighting
chance