Erin Carlyle

Black Peaches

Flies in the summer

                                                 don’t have to mean death

             like in a still life. Picture
                         me as a child riding my Huffy—pink
                         and gold, down the middle

of the street. I ride through a cloud of flies.
                          What else
                                                               could they mean?

                                                               Paint this:
                                                               a bowl of peaches, mostly black,

some split, some spilling
their insides out into the bowl,

and a fly already almost one day
                         into its life.

Erin Carlyle is a poet living in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work can be found in journals such as Tupelo Quarterly, Ruminate, Arts & Letters, Jet Fuel, and Prairie Schooner. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Magnolia Canopy Otherworld, was published by Driftwood Press in 2020.