Cherry Picking in Washington D.C. | Amy Wray Irish

Cherry Picking in Washington D.C.

BY AMY WRAY IRISH

First, the cherry trees blossom, bursting open into 
skirted ballerinas filling the boulevard and the White 
House and the whole nation with pink and white 
petals (aren’t they pretty?) until their frills fall away
and they begin to swell, to reveal their pollination sin, 
forcing them to bear fruit

                        		                 far too soon. 
Young wombs chock full of false promises, bellies sick
on syrupy cherry-flavored stories poured down throats, 
forgetting the choke and force feeding of suffragettes 
by funnel and pretending to forget the funneling of dollars 
away from pre-natal planning and post-natal everything, 
easier to just shut up and take

 				                          whatever gets shoved in.
The options are a) poison or b) bitter dregs so they swallow
and say that it’s sweet but how would they know a good taste 
in their mouth the truth on their lips

 				                          if they’ve only been fed lies.
They don’t know someone cherry picked their words 
and their world. They unknowingly devoured each unripe 
soundbite and even ate the pit believing they were blessed 
and precious and special, told they were so pretty and so
holy, not knowing it was only so they would pick right 
at the polls

               			                  then be easily pushed aside. 
Drooping and forgotten, the poor little flowers are falling
from the pedestal, dropping from labor and lactation and loss
of blood, wilted from so much “women’s work” squeezed 
from their failing bodies, bound now to the bed 
they made, unable to pick up their broken pieces 
to start over or escape 
                                                  
 				                          but hey, 
remember how they were pretty, once?

Amy Wray Irish (she/her) believes poetry’s job is to be both brutally honest and eternally hopeful. Irish has two contest-winning chapbooks (Down to the Bone and Breathing Fire) and numerous other publications. Her work is forthcoming in the 40West Anthology, and the 2026 We’Moon Daily Calendar. Read more of her work at www.amywrayirish.com.