Kingdom of Barberries (Chaiga: cherita + visual art)
Cherita sequence by Cindy Bousquet Harris, with image by “Scred” *
Chaiga copyrighted © by Cindy Bousquet Harris. All rights reserved.

Layer my days with almonds 

yellow sun and cherry jam, 
syrup dripping 

lavish the plate with barberry, 
fields of basmati rice, 
chicken thighs, and yogurt 


	~


satisfy this hunger 
for temperaments cold, hot, 

bloom the saffron on ice 

then melt—
sweet and sour kingdom, 
orange peel in my eye 


	~


onion and cinnamon, 
eggplant to the side, 
crisp bread 

baked on hot pebbles 

in a night 
encrusted with stars. 

* Footnote:

Background art in the chaiga above is a modified version of an image by “Scred” found at Pixabay, and used under the Pixabay License for Content.

Cindy Bousquet Harris

is a poet, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the editor of Spirit Fire Review. Her poetry is found in Nostos, Unlost Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Clamor 2021, Black Bough’s Christmas & Winter Edition, and in several anthologies. Cindy lives in Southern California with her husband and their children.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Gunnysack, cherita sequence by Cindy Bousquet Harris, a semi-finalist in MacQ’s Magician Ekphrastic Writing Challenge (Issue 3, May 2020)