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When the towers fell,
we went to shop for grapefruit: mother’s eyes still clouded over, holding a Ruby Red like a crystal ball for five seconds too long. Yes, violence has found us here; but the violence is othered—borne leagues away in the dry, cracked earth of ideology hostile to this very act of choice. I’m too young, and too scared to recognize violence as a design of itself, so I assign it other names: the cashier’s bloodless lips—fear. The silence of our drive down South Main toward home—mourning. It’ll be years later, as I look for exits before taking a seat, that this violence is not othered nor elsewhere—but here, right here—no visitor, but a friend and a lover that’s always been. But for now, just a short time, I’ll ask mother to halve me a grapefruit as the television rattles off its liturgy, which she’ll set before me in a bowl, with a spoon and extra sugar. |
About This Unit: Poems on Family and Finding Other Lines of Symmetry |
MATT VEKAKIS is an incoming MFA student in poetry at the University of Florida. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Welter, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, High Shelf Press, Tule Review and Waccamaw, among others.
