Best New Poetry: French Pears by Hanna Karras

French Pears

by Hanna Karras

Here is what you learned (NOT ONLY on the dark floors but also in the soft grass, tall or short as it was, trimmed or left to grow frail and brown in the hollow winter; when you walked upon it or rolled, or crawled; when a knee was dropped for security or when hands pressed against clay cold and full; NOT ONLY when you slept but also when you awakened, or were carried through the hallway; when you drifted to and from the flicker of sleep’s candle, which quivered your eyelids, which often gave the impression of surfacing, and - when the surfacing arrived - relaxation at the familiar room, green and deadening to the senses and familiar through repeated use; THROUGHOUT VARIOUS TIMES - seasons but also durations; hours by necessity but preferably days when, upon departing, the sum seemed brazen and conquerous but never traded; ON OCCASIONS of eating - in instances of consumption but also rejection; of cheeses and yogurts, of fat dumplings that dripped broth, but too of things made by strangers: enriched doughs, the dregs of coffee in a paper cup; DURING THE study and manipulation of objects - the first of these being a wand found and dunked to create bubbles but progressing soon to anything small and able to be mouthed, waxy dolls, flash cards of appliances and animals; often, also, improvised things: pillows, mainly, but on several occasions a ceramic pen holder, dropper bottles of bitters - once, even, a sort of shelter taken within a credenza carved in eastern motifs; THROUGH, ALSO, a rotating cast of characters: a family of trolls, an undersea princess, the denizens of a Japanese fishing village, bedraggled spirits in search of respite, Humphrey Bogart, a smattering of the Universal Monsters; AND THINGS, too, that cannot fall into category: the routines of instruction; the punctuation for many months of swimming at the weekends; the grief of distraction; the favoring and hierarchy of parking spaces; the light that even now is waning): That we tender devotion in steady practice; That we would fetch you, little wretch, if ever you strayed.

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Hanna Karras is a writer and mother from Baltimore. She googles "twitter" to go on twitter, but you can find her there at @hihannakarras