Aimee Nezhukumatathil FRUIT THIEVERY: A LAMENT Avon Park, FL Wind made my parents nervous wrecks. Their yard crammed with fruit trees grown from seeds smuggled in a pocket or a shoe: lychee, jackfruit, chico, papaya. Each heavy fruit gently tied with pantyhose sways in the neck of hurricane. They pray for the wind to stop so their fruit will be safe. They don’t want to lose now. They waited three years for a single mango to show, two for an orange, and one before someone actually shoveled out their pomegranate tree in the middle of the night. My mother followed the footprints to the edge of the yard: padlock busted, fire ants scattered into a frantic mess. My mother said, No moonlight. They must have split the wormroots blind, pulled the tree from the sandy soil, while someone else surely had to run behind—careful to pick up all the fallen bruised fruit, darkseed secret— my parents’ stormy and still-beating hearts. |
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano (Tupelo, 2007), winner of the Balcones Prize, and Miracle Fruit (Tupelo, 2003), winner of the ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the Year and the Global Filipino Literary Award. New poems appear in Antioch Review, FIELD, and American Poetry Review. She is associate professor of English at SUNY-Fredonia where she was awarded a Chancellor's Medal of Excellence. Her favorite fruit is jackfruit. www.aimeenez.net |