Fig Cartography by Jane Flett
Fig Cartography
Jane FlettHow to begin this? There’s a dead wasp
in the depths of every fig you’ve ever eaten.
These days, I’m trying not to take everything
as metaphor, but still. It’s the audacity I find
hard to bear. My friend considers every fig
an erotic revelation—sends me photographs
of splayed red flesh and through her eyes
I am there. Something already drenched
and begging for ravage. This is what desire does.
It makes an obscenity of the earth. And I think
I can never tell her, never risk the ruin. Who
am I to lodge a seed of venom and exoskeleton?
And then I think: she knows, of course
she already knows. It is so easy to love something
with a secret wasp heart. I don’t know why
we love like this, except to say: you felt it too,
didn’t you? First you shirk and then you lean
closer, longing for sweetness, but better than that,
longing for the crunch of legs between your teeth.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Passages North, 2025.
ABOUT JANE FLETT
Jane Flett is a Scottish writer who lives in Berlin. Her debut novel, FREAKSLAW, is now available from Doubleday (UK) and Zando (US). Jane’s fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio 4 and features in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading. She is a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award, the New Orleans Writing Residency and the Berlin Senate Stipend for non-German literature. Her work has also been Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize and performed at… (more)
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ENDNOTES
- Explore other works in pursuit of: desire • secrets • intimacy • Or browse the index
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