Summer 2020 Archive
Poetry
5th Avenue Kings Fruit & Vegetables, Brooklyn
By Jamal Michel
Is where I was conceived as an idea, maybe at first
by the ripened tomatoes or in the spaces left between
newly stocked yogurt cups--
one such cup picked up by a young stud
from Port-au-Prince who thought to take it to the Indian girl
at check out, until he checked out
and never asked for her number the first time
but thought better the next, only thing was
he needed at least four more cups of yogurt
to make it a full conversation.
Did they pick my name at the register?
Or did my being float about their innocuous phone calls?
Or perhaps in the unkempt lawn of their first home in Sylmar, CA?
Or it certainly must have happened upon them all at once, at Olive View
hospital, a brown boy swaddled in a blanket caught in their branches.
By Jamal Michel
Is where I was conceived as an idea, maybe at first
by the ripened tomatoes or in the spaces left between
newly stocked yogurt cups--
one such cup picked up by a young stud
from Port-au-Prince who thought to take it to the Indian girl
at check out, until he checked out
and never asked for her number the first time
but thought better the next, only thing was
he needed at least four more cups of yogurt
to make it a full conversation.
Did they pick my name at the register?
Or did my being float about their innocuous phone calls?
Or perhaps in the unkempt lawn of their first home in Sylmar, CA?
Or it certainly must have happened upon them all at once, at Olive View
hospital, a brown boy swaddled in a blanket caught in their branches.
