Another Moon Prize this month, the 121st, goes to Karen J. Weyant's resolute poem "Caught Eating Apples"


Caught Eating Apples

by Karen J. Weyant


I’ve been here before. Usually, at dusk, when the sky
wears thin, when gray bark and broad leaves fade

into dull shadows, when my sneakers, soaked
with dew, slide as I start to climb. I have learned

how to balance on branches, how to hoist
myself up, feet lodged against tree knots and burs.

The best apples are always near the top.
I know to avoid bruised skin, dark holes where

worms have burrowed in. I even know how to spit
seeds, lips puckering as if whistling or waiting

for a kiss. I’ve been taught how to twist each stem,
reciting the alphabet with each turn.

When the stem snaps free, I’m told I will marry
 a boy whose name begins with that letter.

For weeks, it has been me, the fruit,
and the occasional wild turkey or white-tailed deer

that trail in through the field to feast on the cores.
When I am finally caught and questioned, I don’t deny

what I have eaten. I don’t say I am hungry.
I only explain I ate because I could.


* * * * *

"Caught Eating Apples" was first published in District Lit. It is also part of the author's collection Avoiding the Rapture published by Riot in Your Throat press fall 2023. 

Karen J. Weyant's poems have been published in Chautauqua, Copper Nickel, Crab Orchard Review, Fourth River, Lake Effect, Rattle, River Styx, and Whiskey Island. Her first full-length collection of poems, Avoiding the Rapture, will be published this fall. She lives, reads, and writes in northern Pennsylvania.