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POETRY

On Picking Out the Perfect Grapefruit

By Matt Vekakis





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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. 
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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.

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