The Fruited Plain

For Rumeysa Ozturk

She’d heard that our country was
the fruited plain of freedom, a place
of streets, not paved with gold, but

with friendship, with care, with that
Yankee Doodle optimism, that get-
up-and-go. She felt privileged

to be here, privileged to attend
such a prestigious university
where she learned about free

speech, how it was protected
here the way a mother would
shield her child in a storm. She

was honored when the school
newspaper published her article
about the injustice she witnessed

nightly on the news—the bombings,
children dead amid the rubble. She
was startled when the men with

masks surrounded her on the
sidewalk she so often traveled
on that street of freedom. Startled

when they shoved her into the van.
Startled to discover that she had
traded one nowhere for another.

Elegy for Lois

Somehow, we were boyfriend and girlfriend
in first grade when we didn’t know what
a boyfriend and girlfriend were or what

we were supposed to do beyond exchanging red
dime store cards on Valentine’s Day—chewing
pink candy hearts with hokey messages on them:

Angel, Puppy Love, Sweet Pea, Cutie Pie, and
the worst: Kiss Me. Fifty years later, at a class
reunion, you tell me that I’d phone and you’d

sit on your kitchen counter and chant, Oh
Charlie, a six-year-old incantation of adoration.
You didn’t have it easy, Lois. You sucked your

thumb until we got to high school. In sixth grade
you burst into tears: My parents are getting
divorced! Your agony pulsed through rows of rigidly

aligned desks. We good Catholic boys and girls were
embarrassed by your trouble. Sister Humbert had no
words of comfort for you, Lois. We marched in the

high school band together, me on drums, you with
your clarinet. How many national anthems did we
play at football games? How many times did we

strike up the Notre Dame fight song (modified to fit
St. Mary’s Gaels) on those rare occasions when
they scored a touchdown? We lost contact

for years, but found each other on Facebook. You had
been a nurse, married Jules, a man who deserved
you, and had come down with many crippling

maladies. It was your heart, your big, loving
heart that finally deserted you. Your daughter
posted that you wanted to meet Jesus with grace

and composure. I hope that happens, Lois. You
have a lot to teach Him about compassion, about
grace, about what it means to love the world.

Somehow

you knew
all along that

nobody hears your song
the notes belong
only to you

nobody will read
your autobiography
because it wrote you

you’re naked under
all those clothes

the worst invention
of the 20th century
identity
now no one knows
who they are

according to Camus
Sisyphus is laughing

the thing about humor
it hides sadness
behind balloons
and noise makers

you’re the only one
at your party

you can’t invite anyone else

if you could
they wouldn’t come

Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His ninth poetry collection is Tragedy in the Arugula Aisle (Arroyo Seco Press, 2025). His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, Chiron Review, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere.

‘The Fruited Plain’ first appeared in Arrhythmia Magazine.