This month’s Versed in Florida is with poet Sidney Wade. She teaches English at the University of Florida. Her poems and translations of foreign language poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. WADE's Turkish poetry translations will be published in October. She tells WGCU’s Amy Tardif though she came to poetry later in life, she’s now helping other poets as the editor of UF’s literary Journal “Subtropics”.
Radish
Remember
Rapunzel’s
mother,
who craved
the fresh
wet savor
of the little
red orb
and its crisp
white flesh
with such
grave
consequence?
--that carnal itch
to fill the living
tissue with
a lively meat
even if
you have
to steal it
from a witch?
It’s the spell
of the senses,
whose language,
written in
instinct,
binds us
to the swell,
the hum,
the nub,
the moist
soil of joys
and trouble,
the sensorium
of our many-
throated world
whose humble
beauties
sometimes cost
the most.