Please enjoy today’s selection: “Plums” by Mariano Zaro, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon – Poems about Food:

Plums

My father wraps plums with newspapers.
I cut the pages in half. He wraps the plums.
We are in the attic. It’s summer.
We don’t talk. He rolls the fruits,
his fingers twist both ends of the paper.

It’s raining outside.

The plums look like wrapped candy.
He is meticulous, not too meticulous, just enough.
The plums have to be without nicks or cuts,
firm, not too ripe, unblemished.

The storms have been coming all afternoon.
That’s why my father is home;
he couldn’t go to the fields.

He ties the plums with a thin string,
like a necklace.
Five plums in each string, exactly five.
I don’t know why.
His hands inspect the fruit, twist the paper,
tie the knots, do the math.
I hide my hands under the newspapers.
He is on a ladder now.
He hangs the strings from a wooden beam in the ceiling.

I pass the strings to him.
One by one.
Sometimes, unintentionally,
my hand brushes his hand.
He leans his body against the ladder,
rests for a moment, cleans his sweat.

My father is old.
The strings dangle from the ceiling.
Plums in-waiting like dull,
modest Christmas ornaments.

Fruit for the winter, he says.
As if you could wrap the summer with newspapers.
As if you could wrap your father’s hands
for the future days of hunger.

The post Poem of the Day (04-27-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Appetite” by Paulann Petersen (Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita), which appears in The Poeming Pigeon – Poems about Food:

Appetite

Pale gold and crumbling with crust
mottled dark, almost bronze,
pieces of honeycomb lie on a plate.
Flecked with the pale paper
of hive, their hexagonal cells
leak into the deepening pool
of amber. On your lips,
against palate, tooth and tongue,
the viscous sugar squeezes
from its chambers, sears sweetness
into your throat until you chew
pulp and wax from a blue city
of bees. Between your teeth
is the blown flower and the flower’s
seed. Passport pages stamped
and turning. Death’s officious hum.
Both the candle and its anther
of flame. Your own yellow hunger.
Never say you can’t take
this world into your mouth.

The post Poem of the Day (04-17-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Scars, Philippine Sweet Potatoes and Mango” by Georgette Howington, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon – Poems about Food:

Scars, Philippine Sweet Potatoes and Mango

My five year old fingers pressed coconut oil onto the raised
red edge around the glassy skin, about the size of my palm,
on my Mother’s brown thigh, not unlike a dozen or more other
scars on her legs painting stories like faded tattoos.
She pointed to one, “Bombers overhead, shrapnel pierced
my legs, my basket of sweet potatoes flying, flesh burning,
hot blood flowing but the only pain I felt was constant hunger.”
For two years they ran from village to village; they hid.
During the day dressed as a boy she went to the old farm
fields and hands plunged into the womb of earth pulling
sweet potatoes to light, setting them free; a sacred find.
The assault passing over, she knelt to gather all she could
save, placing them back into the basket and running with the
others into a grove of mango where fruit laid next to rotting
bodies and she picked up as many as the basket would hold.
That night Tita Lola baked sweet potatoes in hot rocks, under
the tropical skies and the children ate the warm soft orange
flesh as if they were chocolate confections; mango juice
dribbling down their chins sucking on the big seeds.
My Mother stroked my hair as I rubbed the oil over her scars.

The post Poem of the Day (04-04-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.