Sour Fruit
Being poetically misunderstood
comes with the metric.
So my poem about my
grandpop and sweet canned
peaches is thought sweet
and it is, but sticky rather than
Ripe. I meant to contrast
an unimportant grandson’s recollection
of syrup and fruit with an
unloved son’s
memory of meanness.
Mostly I meant to mourn how we are
reduced to almost nothing, a
pastiche of peaches, 93 years and all
we retain of the man
I called grandpop is an
image of sweet liquid with a
faint metallic
aftertaste.
5 thoughts on "Sour Fruit"
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Perfect title.
Incredible concept
Incredibly executed.
Perfect end.
Good poem, Joe! Clapping.
So much truth. I felt the tension in the original poem – I lived my whole life with that same tension between the grandfather I experienced and the father that lived in my father’s memory.
sweet with metallic aftertaste!
in both these poems, our reduction to almost nothing and the bit of memory that yet exists – yes!
But that is the power of your words and the readers’ assigning interpretations’…