Pop-Pop Sectioning Grapefruit and Doing Cantaloupe
For my father, John Coleman 1902-1987
I
It is 1924; my father is twenty-two.
My grandfather never speaks directly to him, so John does not hear
I want you to stay. He leaves Europe, his father and his piano behind
for Chicago where he studies music and languages.
Dead mother, mother who hugged him, loved him, told him so—
did not wash her hands after touching the cat, laughed and sang out of tune,
what was there left?
John works his way across the Atlantic and back—
four round trips before my grandfather dies.
Works as a pantry-boy, halving grapefruit, trimming each
small section, cutting out patterns for a quilt, hands bloodied,
vomiting, all the way.
II
I am sixty-five, my daughter’s visiting, and we are drinking
a very bad hazelnut latte I swiped from a bed and breakfast
a few months ago. It’s terrible. We giggle. We chat.
She reminds me of cantaloupe, says Pop-Pop cut cantaloupe every morning
whenever she visited. Marie has a good memory, she’s thirty-eight. Cantaloupe.
I only remember grapefruit. I do not ask her if she can cut grapefruit,
sections, delicately as a rose petal wafts in a gentle breeze.
Of course she can. She’s a real cook. I ask her about cantaloupe,
ask her to paint me a picture of her grandfather halving them,
removing seeds, tell me more so I can catch up my mind to hers, see
a photograph of him delighting my child, the way he delighted me
each day during grapefruit season.
Because One Is A Member Of The Underprivileged
A man sits in a submarine
Shop in Maine picking
His nose. I think the cut-
Lets, deep fried veal,
Are made of chopped
Rat, and I greedily feed
Them to my husband.
One would think
An ordinary nose picker
Would be easy to swallow.
Another booth boasts
A Mafia type with wife
And kid. Wife blots her
Pizza like weirdoes do
In whole food places.
The kid is dancing
The Mambo while the Don
Picks nits from his chin.
It’s always like this
In Naples, every summer,
When I escape the heat
And head north for clean
Living. The kid takes over
The place, screaming and
Ordering (people around),
Practice for the future, as he
Crawls back to his mother’s
Tit and whines for more.
An allegory between
The mob and a group
Of hippies, strange.
But then, I think Manson,
Manson, Manson and remember
That not all bearded men are
Christ. Nose picker is still
At it, my husband finished
His rat burger, the kid, he’s back
Doing the Mambo while his mother
Blots her cheese and Don
Picks nits from his chin.
June Coleman Magrab has published in Anthologies: The Other Side of Sorrow (Hoblebush Books, 2006) and The Breath of Parted Lips, Volume II (CalvanKerry Press, 2004) as well as various journals: Calapooya Collage, Caprice, New York Quarterly, Stirring, etc. She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow, was awarded a Vermont Studio Center grant and has been a Frost Place Participant.