In celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we pause to honor the voices, stories, and lived experiences that continue to shape our shared world. This poem invites us to consider how identity is formed, named, and sometimes misunderstood—and how we might meet one another with greater care.
Peaches
A crate of peaches straight from the farm
has to be maintained, or eaten in days.
Obvious, but in my family, they went so fast,
I never saw the mess that punishes delay.
I thought everyone bought fruit by the crate,
stored it in the coolest part of the house,
then devoured it before any could rot.
I’m from the Peach State, and to those
who ask But where are you from originally,
I’d like to reply The homeland of the peach,
but I’m too nice, and they might not look it up.
In truth, the reason we bought so much
did have to do with being Chinese—at least
Chinese in that part of America, both strangers
and natives on a lonely, beautiful street
where food came in stackable containers
and fussy bags, unless you bothered to drive
to the source, where the same money landed
a bushel of fruit, a twenty-pound sack of rice.
You had to drive anyway, each house surrounded
by land enough to grow your own, if lawns
hadn’t been required. At home I loved to stare
into the extra freezer, reviewing mountains
of foil-wrapped meats, cakes, juice concentrate,
mysterious packets brought by house guests
from New York Chinatown, to be transformed
by heat, force, and my mother’s patient effort,
enough to keep us fed through flood or storm,
provided the power stayed on, or fire and ice
could be procured, which would be labor-intensive,
but so was everything else my parents did.
Their lives were labor, they kept this from the kids,
who grew up to confuse work with pleasure,
to become typical immigrants’ children,
taller than their parents and unaware of hunger
except when asked the odd, perplexing question.
By Adrienne Su found at Poetry.org
Invitation: “I thought everyone…”
Adrienne Su is an award-winning poet and the author of five poetry collections, including Peach State, Living Quarters, and Middle Kingdom. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, and her work appears in major anthologies such as Best American Poetry and The Norton Introduction to Literature. Read more poetry from Adrienne HERE.
Her writing often explores identity, family, food, and belonging, offering a grounded and attentive lens on everyday life. She teaches creative writing and serves as Poet-in-Residence at Dickinson College.
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May Courageous Citizen
Doris “Granny D” Haddock
“Just as an unbalanced mind can accumulate mental stresses that can grow and take on a life of their own, so little decisions of our modern life can accumulate to the point where our society finds itself bombing other people for their oil, or supporting dictators who torture whole populations—all so that our unbalanced interests might be served.”
This phrase -- "both strangers and natives" caught my attention with regard to immigrants, their identities and lived experience in the US... particularly now with the prevalence of "anti-immigrant" attitudes, policies and practices by one of the most anti-immigrant presidents and administrations. May people of conscience and good will not be silent in the midst of this, particularly the ICE raids, detentions and forced deportations...