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| Pawan Yadav |
Harvest
Crooked bones, crooked branches
Mrs. Yee cares for her persimmon tree
like family,
works the soil of another year
with Dao, prayer—
whatever keeps the crepe-paper dragon’s
torn-and-taped accordion vertebrae
stretching across her window
Centuries, ancestors,
hers is but a blink in the steady gaze of generations,
a brief breath, inhaling petrichor’s instructions:
mulching, loam grows rich,
watering, roots go deep,
pruning, space appears
between thoughts
Come autumn, fruit plumps—
round Laughing Buddha bellies
on the branches
Ash powders the red-and-gold joss pot
burning sandalwood outside her door
Overnight, a FOR SALE sign
stakes its claim in her yard
Realtors report American home buyers
want new houses that look old:
mantels, railings, floors
Contractors complain they can’t find
enough qualified artisans to carve,
fire, and paint the thin veneer
of a hundred years
into the tile, wood and walls
of a ninety-day construction job:
a look that’s aged and distressed,
provided, we don’t have to wait too long
Provided, it’s not our faces—
Next door, Mrs.Yee pulls out her ladder,
positions it under the tree,
climbs rung by rung
like incense into the air,
another year behind her, going up in smoke
Neighbors roll their eyes, shake their heads:
persimmons, three for a dollar at the market!
The rickety stepladder they’re sure will be her death!
So much to believe in
that can’t be seen—
solace, shade,
her husband’s ashes
buried beneath the branches
The love that keeps her reaching
to gently squeeze
more than half her lifetime
to feel if it is ripe
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| Daniel Skach-Mills |
A 2026 Pushcart Prize nominee, Daniel Skach-Mills’s poetry is forthcoming in The Pensive Journal and Wild Roof Review. His book, The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems, was a 2012 Oregon Book Award finalist. A former Trappist monk, Daniel lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon, where he served for 15 years as a docent at Lan Su Chinese Garden. He was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in 2024.
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