☀ Today's Poem: "Poisoned Elegy (Green Apples)" Nora Gupta

April 12, 2025

Poisoned Elegy (Green Apples)

I ate the fruits of loss and shame, not knowing
they marinated for weeks under the tree bark out back,

poisoned with words I was too young to understand. Bite
by bite, my life projected in front of me

from a silver beam, like Heaven had opened
its refrigerator door—and I wondered, who is Loss, anyway. Once

Aunt Kate passed on, and her body began
decomposing into the rich black molasses of memory, did she

really drip down my throat with sweetness

until my esophagus tingled as I slept? Bite by bite, my teeth
pierced bruises. Acid boogied on my tongue. Whenever

I leaned over the sink to wash out my mouth, I caught Loss
staring at me in the bathroom mirror, or at least a girl

who looked like Loss. She sat in the second stall—door
open, skipping second-period Health, waiting for me

to read the clock she cradled in her palms, which ticked
with each breath she took, until Shame walked in and claimed

the next stall. Shame, because I couldn't fully remember
a single memory with Kate—not the days we curled

into ourselves under thick wool blankets on the couch, as rain

drummed against the windows, not even days we filled
with awe as 婆婆 (pòpó) hummed to the sizzling symphony

of green peppers and pork over his oily pan. Shame watched me
walk right past Loss, embarrassed to hug Her when she showed up

on my first day of high school. I left Her arms hanging open—
Her eyes still hopeful, Her half-smile holding

the simple desire to watch old movies, to go shopping. Instead,
I stayed home, spent hours on calls with a boy

who never cared. And then, finally, I bit into the fruit

and Shame flamed across my chest until my skin bubbled
everywhere Loss had touched me, right there

over the kitchen sink—it flamed and bubbled until I agreed
to pierce the cold air of Fifth Avenue with our knife-tip

laughter, Loss and I, giggling at our reflections
rippling across the darkening store windows.

from the book DECIPHER THE SMOKE / Gatekeeper Press

READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM

Through this poem, I strove to personify loss, as well as the degrees of shame and regret that often accompany loss. Specifically, the poem shows the narrator’s journey of maturing, ultimately arriving at the narrator’s newfound acknowledgment of both loss’s complexity and the importance of reconciliation and acceptance.

Nora Gupta on "Poisoned Elegy (Green Apples)"

What Sparks Poetry:
Readers Write Back

"I disappoint myself. I hold my memory in my hands, searching for the exact hour I read Chloe Martinez’s “Rationale” from the Poetry Daily newsletter, but the memory slips out of my hands like an egg. I imagine that the morning of the poem’s feature in July 2024, I am in my sister’s apartment trying to keep my life....So, when a mail alert arrives and I see ‘Poetry Daily,’ the sunlight icon, ‘Today’s Poem,’ by it, I will open it like a lover’s mouth just to taste even the littlest delight. The poem will not make sense to me when I do not see myself in it. Full of every other thing, I cannot make room to care about a ‘she’ who refuses to sleep alone nor the warmth of her skin. But, I will make room for something other than despair. I will run to my Notes app, & like a Prophet, head full of lightning, I will write, ‘Because you were waiting / for something, something came to you, despite recent despair, / despite your intermittent rages. Because you were in need.’ A salve. Uncertainty breathes everywhere, but I will hold those lines like law. I hold it like law."

I Echo

READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE

"Jennifer Perrine on Formalism in Poetry, Finding Inspiration in Grief, and Writing as Healing"

"I’d be over-generalizing if I said poetry does something that no other literary forms can do. But I turn to poetry when I need a formal container to unlock something that I don’t quite know how to say yet. Whether that container is a rhyme scheme or syllabics or acrostic poetic, form invites me to use language in a way that I’m unlikely to do when I write prose. Language becomes a little more surprising, wondrous, mysterious, which helps me write about the parts of life that are so sublime or ridiculous or traumatic that words would otherwise fail me."

viaOREGON ARTSWATCH

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