Poem of the Week | October 20, 2025

“Picnic” by Theodora Ziolkowski is our Poem of the Week.

Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of the novella, On the Rocks (TRP: The University Press of SHSH), winner of a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and Ghostlit (TRP), a collection of poems. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, The Normal School, Short Fiction (England), The Seventh Wave, Prairie Schooner, Oxford Poetry (UK), and elsewhere. She lives in Kearney, Nebraska, where she teaches creative writing as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Read more at theodoraziolkowski.com

PICNIC

At twilight, a truck sails across I-80,

packed tight with almonds, the air silvered

with dew. Later, the driver will compare what he saw

to a bat out of hell, a phrase that will carry into the headlines,

spew from mouths describing how almonds showered

the scene of the crash: See them rain past the driver,

who survived, though the kid driving the Nissan—

Well, all we know is that the almonds had travelled

up the spine of the country, far from the branches

in Georgia from which they were shaken, left for days

on the ground to dry in the sun,

my host explains as I try to process tragedy

over this table of sandwiches and fresh-cut strawberries

when his friend appears, plunking down the Ziploc

she promised, for her husband is a first responder,

he got down on his hands and knees to save them,

he and the other responders who phoned their families

to get out here, quick—because, you see,

almonds are a delicacy, there were so many,

and wouldn’t this be a fine weekend for baking?

The almond, she says, is related to the peach, the rose,

the plum—I dab my mouth and think of the William

Carlos Williams poem about the plum being so cold

and so sweet, and I can’t help but see its almond-shaped pit

like a bruise to the heart

as my host shakes them onto a plate.

And I take one and bite.

Author’s Note

I drafted an early version of “Picnic” shortly after giving a reading. Before the reading, I was offered a lovely spread. It was the first day of summer, and the weather was exceedingly hot. I can remember the gnats gathering in the grove where we sat, perspiration filming my dress as I enjoyed the sandwiches my host generously prepared. But I remember best when the subject of a road accident came up during the meal. There was such a friction between the story I was hearing, the food before us, and our surroundings. I started thinking about the varieties of our consumption, and through what means we must—or choose—to consume every day. The poem took seed from there.