Weekly Poem: 'Olives'

**By A.E. Stallings** Sometimes a craving comes for salt, not sweet, For fruits that you can eat Only if pickled in a vat of tears-- A rich and dark and indehiscent meat Clinging tightly to the pit--on spears Of toothpicks maybe, drowned beneath a tide Of vodka and vermouth, Rocking at the bottom of a wide, Shallow, long-stemmed glass, and gentrified, Or rustic, on a plate cracked like a tooth, A miscellany of the humble hues Eponymously drab-- Brown greens and purple browns, the blacks and blues That chart the slow chromatics of a bruise-- Washed down with swigs of barrel wine that stab The palate with pine-sharpness. They recall The harvest and its toil, The nets spread under silver trees that foil The blue glass of the heavens in the fall-- Daylight packed in treasuries of oil, Paradigmatic summers that decline Like singular archaic nouns, the troops Of hours in retreat. These fruits are mine-- Small bitter drupes Full of the golden past and cured in brine.   "Olives" is the title poem of "A.E. Stallings'":http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ae-stallings forthcoming collection, which comes out in the spring. Also a translator, Stallings was one of this year's MacArthur Award winners. She grew up in Georgia and attended the University of Georgia and Oxford. She studied classical languages and literature -- training that has greatly informed her work. She's lived in Athens, Greece, for the last 12 years. Click "here":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2011/09/conversation-ae-stallings-poet-and-translator-inspired-by-the-classics.html for more poems by Stallings and her recent conversation with Jeffrey Brown.