Edible ecologies stuff Ross Gay's poetic Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015). A fig tree sprawls rich in fruit over a street in Philadelphia, so abundant it almost threatens. A woman “works hard / rinsing and scrubbing / the walk / lest some poor sod / slip on the / silk of a fig / and break his hip.” Lusciousness minimizes the possible damage as the speaker imagines the sod might “reach over to gobble up / the perpetrator.” The speaker's presence serendipitously prevents this injury as the woman offers him figs and “says take / as much as / you can / help me / so I load my / pockets and mouth.” An old woman “loosed one / from a low slung / branch and its eye / wept like hers.” As the number of figs diminishes into hands and mouths, more mouths arrive, “eight or nine,” and the...

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