Grapefruit
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1Tossing a grapefruit in the air to catch it, as I skip
past squash and eggplants to my shopping cart,
I can imagine juggling two or three—
just possible, perhaps—or five or six: why not,
since it’s a fantasy? Or holding like a god
one golden planet, as I swing, beneath a tent
2of stars, from a trapeze, then pitch the orb,
a flaming meteorite, in softball fashion
to another acrobat below. Or even, most amazing,
tightrope-walking, with a grapefruit
in each hand as balance, and the crowd in silence,
breathless, looking up, until I finally cast
3the trifles, with a kiss, to my admirers. Absurd!
I’m acrophobic, fearing edges, ledges,
any place where I might fall, or feel my feet
give way—attracted by the void, as if compelled
to hurl myself, to fill that emptiness.
So no funambulism! But these little globes,
4so round and ludic, offer fancy’s game—
suspended on their pithy stems
like Christmas balls among the dense and polished
foliage, or lanterns for an evening revery. Within,
another world, the membrane glistening,
the clustered grains as pale as seed pearls, nacred,
5neat—or teardrops in the mind. One winter
as the sunlight ripened on the purest blue, we picked,
among the fragrant quincunces along
the Rio Grande, huge lemons, oranges, grapefruit,
green but sweet—and ate the hemispheres, the flesh
asunder, in the garden shade of huisache
6and mesquite. Word came too, that season,
of my uncle’s death among the burning waves
of Leyte Gulf. The light turned violent; my father
dreamt of phantoms writhing in the groves,
dark jesters pillaging uprooted trees, the severed fruit
as if tormented, ashen, grimacing in pain.
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Référence électronique
Catharine Savage Brosman, « Grapefruit », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], Écrivains, écritures, Œuvres d’écrivains, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2007, consulté le 01 mars 2014. URL : http://lisa.revues.org/481 ; DOI : 10.4000/lisa.481
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