Poetry
Andrea Egert

Photo Credit: Robert Taylor

Strawberries

For $6, I bought you organic strawberries

Instead of the inexpensive, satanic strawberries

With satanic strawberries, you get 2 pounds for $2.99

And I got them for you, once, because they were so cheap

And I was trying to preserve our always-dwindling resources

I got satanic strawberries—pesticidal, hypo-manic strawberries

Those gargantuan, grandiose, drought-resistant red strawberries

The kind of berries that deplete the soil in which they’re grown

Smirking vermillionaires that tastelessly mock their eater

Fruits whose evil, with refrigeration, preserves them

It made me feel bad to have gotten them for you

So I went out and bought you some organic

They go bad sooner than satanic

So eat them now

Andrea Egert is a writer, visual artist, and singer/songwriter. She was a participant in the Squaw Valley Community of Writers 2006 summer conference, is a recipient of the ASCAPlus award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, and was a studio arts participant in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She is a licensed MSW and psychotherapist in the state of New Jersey, and practices the domestic arts in an acceptable fashion in the home that she shares with her husband and tweenage son. This is her first published poem. Email: egert.andrea[at]gmail.com