J. Scott Brownlee is the author of Requiem for Used Ignition Cap, which won the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize and 2016 Bob Bush Memorial Award for Best First Book of Poetry. His chapbooks include Highway or Belief (2013 Button Poetry Prize), Ascension (2014 Robert Phillips Prize), and On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County (2015 Tree Light Books Prize). Born in rural Texas, he earned his MFA at New York University, where he was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow.

Peach Philosophy

by J. Scott Brownlee

You must not be afraid of what waits
     after death,
my past self says to me
as we share a peach slice. I don’t
     understand him—all his cryptic philosophies
of space & time, the age marks not grown
     on his face that define my own now: scarred
some, pitted, distinct as pink, ripened fruit is.

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