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# One Poem by Shane McCrae
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/one-poem-by-shane-mccrae/
- Published: 2018-07-04T11:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:24:57.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected one poem by Shane McCrae for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/07/paul_cezanne_still_life_with_water_jug_c-_1892-3.jpg)

Paul Cézanne, “Still Life With Water Jug” (c. 1892-3) (image via Wikimedia Commons)

## Jim Limber on the Apple Harvest

Never was good with women I mean I

Had a few woman friends at the factory

But that was work and sometimes I think they

Were nice to me because they had to be

Nice to the men even the men beneath them

And me I died just like I started down

But nobody has to be nice in Heaven

Nobody has to smile God is a wom-

an for some folks in Heaven and

God is a man for others and for some

Folks God is both and neither one for some folks God

Is neither one and nothing in-between

I see folks’ Gods whenever I see their faces

But God don’t look like anybody here

For me God is a woman and Her face is

Black as a bright black stone I’ve walked with Her

On the flat stone path between the apple orchard

And the garden where first the harvest flowers

\* \* \*

Shane McCrae’s most recent books are [*The Gilded Auction Block*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D2BWHFB/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), and [*In the Language of My Captor*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XD3BQZN/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com) (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which won the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry, was a finalist for the National Book Award, The Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award, and has been nominated for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.