Irene Latham is a Birmingham poet and novelist. Her debut historical novel Leaving Gee’s Bend (Putnam/Penguin, 2010) is set in Alabama during the Great Depression and was awarded Alabama Library Association's 2011 Children's Book Award. Her latest novel Don’t Feed the Boy (Roaring Brook/Macmillan, 2012) is about a boy who wants to escape his life at the zoo. Poetry editor for Birmingham Arts Journal, Irene has also authored two award-winning poetry collections: What Came Before (Negative Capability Press, 2007) and The Color of Lost Rooms (Blue Rooster Press, 2010), awarded the Writer’s Digest 19th Annual Self-Published Book Prize for Poetry.

Inside a Tangerine

 

Soil.
And rain.
And lack of rain.

Ant
and woodpecker,
warm armadillo
nest.

January icicles
and August
hurricane.

Hope,
if you look close.

And forgiveness.
See how bitter
is grafted
to beauty?

Yes.
I taste the moon. 

 

 

 

 

Read Irene Latham's previous work in Still

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