Tila’s house
March 19
6:30
“Then his climbing beans were eaten by the deer, the turnips by rabbits, and a pair of porcupines made quick work of his 🍑 saplings.”
“There is a beaded necklace dropped by a longshoreman’s wife during a moment of indiscretion, a splintered lens from a bookkeeper’s spectacles, stray curls blown from a barber’s market stall by an offshore breeze, 🍑 pits, rotting broadsheets of forgotten songs. ”
Peach Rating: 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
February 6, 6:30
“I hope he doesn’t mess that up and lose her, because she’s a 🍑.
Peach rating: 🍑🍑, overall evening 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
December 12, 6:30
“Sadie took a bite of the fruit. It was mildly sweet, its flesh somewhere between a 🍑 and a cantaloupe. Maybe it was her favorite fruit, too?”
“You are in a 🍑 orchard.
Here is a perfect day. Your high school classmate, Swan, is in town, and he knows a guy who has adopted a 🍑 tree on Masumoto Family Farm, near Fresno. Swan’s guy says that you and your friends can take all the fruit they want from the tree, but the only day you’re allowed to go is Saturday morning.
“People adopt 🍑 trees?” you ask.
“These aren’t ordinary 🍑 es,” Swan tells you. “The fruit is too delicate to be shipped to grocery stores. The farm has been owned by the family since 1948, since just after internment. My friend had to write an essay and fill out an application to be allowed to adopt the tree.”
You tell Zoe, and she wants to go. And she invites Sadie, who invites Alice. And you invite Sam, who invites Lola, the girl he is seeing. And then you invite Simon and Ant, because they should take a day off from making Love Doppelgängers every now and again. The group leaves Los Angeles at 6 a.m. and by 9:30, you’re in Fresno, but it seems like a whole other world.
“The 🍑 es are impossibly large and almost fluffy. They aren’t engineered to survive the indignities of shipping, of grocery store shelves. Zoe samples one, and she says it’s like eating a flower. And then she hands it to you, and you take a bite, and you say it’s like drinking a 🍑 . And then you hand the 🍑 to Sam, who bites down and says, it’s like a song about a 🍑 more than it’s like a 🍑 .”
“And your friends begin to make increasingly absurd similes and metaphors about 🍑 es.
“It’s like finding Jesus.”
“It’s like finding out the things you believed in as a child are actually real.”
“It’s like eating the mushrooms in Super Mario.”
“It’s like recovering from dysentery.”
“It’s like Christmas morning.”
“It’s like all eight nights of Hanukkah.”
“It’s like having an orgasm.”
“It’s like having multiple orgasms.”
“It’s like watching a great movie.”
“Reading a great book.”
“Playing a great game.”
“It’s like finishing debugging on your own game.”
“It’s the taste of youth itself.”
“It’s feeling well after a long sickness.”
“It’s running a marathon.”
“I’ll probably never have to do a single other thing in my life, because I tasted this 🍑 .”
The last one to taste is Sadie. Somehow, the 🍑 —what’s left of it—makes its way back to you, and you hold it up to the tree, where Sadie has been industriously harvesting.
Sadie wears a big straw hat, and she has climbed up the ladder and set a wicker basket on the top step. She looks so fine and wholesome, like a girl in a WPA poster. She is smiling at you, exposing the narrow gap between her teeth. “Do I dare?” she asks.
“You dare.”
“You are in the strawberry field.
You are dead.
A prompt comes up on the screen: Start game from the beginning?
Yes, you think. Why not? If you play again, you might win.
Suddenly, there you are, brand-new, feathers restored, bones unbroken, sanguine with fresh blood.
You are flying more slowly than last time, because you don’t want to miss any of it. The cows. The lavender. The woman humming Beethoven. The distant bees. The sad-faced man and the couple in the pond. The beat of your heart before you go onstage. The feel of a lace sleeve against your skin. Your mother singing Beatles songs to you, trying to sound like she’s from Liverpool. The first playthrough of Ichigo. The rooftop on Abbot Kinney. The taste of Sadie mixed with Hefeweizen beer. Sam’s round head in your hands. A thousand paper cranes. Yellow-tinted sunglasses. A perfect 🍑 .
This world, you think.
You are flying over the strawberry field, but you know it’s a trap.
This time, you keep flying.”
.
Peach rating 🍑🍑🍑, discussion gets a 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
Suzanne’s 6:30pm
“It tastes of fruit, of 🍑 es. Drink it, Miranda, and you will be happier still.”
Miranda took the gilt cup. She sniffed at it.
“Yes. Yes, it does smell of 🍑 es. Oh look, there’s the sun. Really red gold looking as though it was lying on the edge of the world.”
Peach rating 🍑🍑 for the book but 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑 for the evening.
Nan’s September 18
“ He littered her kitchen with 🍑 pits.”
Peach rating: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
August 16, 6:30
“For a joke, I put her cat 🍑es on my head, pulled his feet around my chin. Like brr.”
Shaneen’s
June 27, 2023
6:30 pm
Peach rating🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑, bonus points for the author
Mina’s
April 11, 2023
March 6, 2023, 6:30pm
“The surprise of seeing her body all at once, the pale bikini of untanned skin like invisible clothes over the 🍑es
of breasts and her cooch.”
🍑 cobbler cut in a little square. Right now,
I could draw that cobbler.”
“Mom is gorgeous, she’s killing him with it, prettier than two 🍑es”
Rating: 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
“Demon Copperhead,” by Barbara Kingsolver and “Trust,” by Hernan Diaz
Barbara Kingsolver Mike Belleme for The New York Times
Two awards were given in this category: to Barbara Kingsolver, for a recasting of the Charles Dickens novel “David Copperfield” set in Appalachia. The narrator’s “wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse – and his efforts to conquer them, the committee said. Hernan Diaz was honored for “Trust” which explores family, ambition and wealth through linked narratives in different literary styles.
Wendy’s
6:30pm
“Her gray hair frizzy, cheekbones protruding like the tops of two 🍑 es, tattooed eyebrows rusting as the ink fades out. ”
“There were 🍑 -colored roses and white hydrangeas to decorate the tables, budding lilies, cream and chartreuse, to strew over the wooden arbor we’d pass under in the ceremony.”
“Metal containers full of jeotgal, salt-fermented seafood banchan, affectionally known as rice thieves, because their intense, salty flavor cries out for starchy, neutral balance; raw, pregnant crabs, floating belly up in soy sauce to show off the unctuous roe protruding out from beneath their shells; millions of minuscule 🍑 -colored krill used for making kimchi or finishing hot soup with rice; and my family’s favorite, crimson sacks of pollack roe smothered in gochugaru, myeongnanjeot.”
Rating: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Food: 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
Heidi’s
March 6, 6:30pm
Visiting author event
Rating: 🍑🍑🍑
Author: 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
Portland Peaches 