persimmons by li-young lee

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner  
for not knowing the difference  
between persimmon and precision.  
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.  
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.  
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.  
Chew the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.  
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down.
I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.  
Naked:   I’ve forgotten. Ni, wo:   you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon...


The verses above make up the first three stanzas of the poem Persimmons by Li-Young Lee. View the full text of the poem here. I rediscovered this piece while looking through the Norton Anthology of Poetry I read for a high school poetry class. 


The poem is beautiful. I love pieces that link food to memory, family, language, who we are, where we have been, and who we have been. Another good food/identity poem is Patricia Smith's When the Burning Begins, which is about hot water cornbread, her childhood, and her relationship to her father, loss, and the creative power of poetry.