Ode to Muscadines
Two poems by Ellis Farese
Ode to Muscadines
A muscadine to a grape like me to my younger cousins. More like siblings, technically not. Thick-skinned as sweet as summer spit out the seeds, and you’ll be hooked. Hooked onto the juicy, melt-in-your-mouth insides. Hooked onto the porch sitting, fruit eating, wine sipping family rituals. Nourishes your soul the only way a good cousin can. You were there for Sunday dinner. Succulently seated in a milk glass bowl, accompanied by a tiny spoon. A symbol of me, for my namesake relished in your sustain. You filled my great-grandmother’s plate and belly. Spread on a slice of sourdough bread. Brewed into a fragrant wine. Or, you wait patiently on the shelf caringly packed in a mason jar. She picked you straight from the vine in Benton County, Mississippi. Anchoring our hearts, our womanhood, in this land. Your fruit bears witness to our identity. Waning summer light, concentrated into purple candies of sweet. I desperately seek you in the market like a rare gem I’m destined to find. Staining my lips purple, I rest knowing you’re of my soil. In my new home nestled in the land of old, muscadine vines as thick as an arm abound; flexing their brawn at that scrawny trestle. Perhaps it’s you that pulled me back. Back to the land of my great-grandmother, of my cousins. Our memories a thicket of knotted vines, but, your fruit we share.
Toothpick Trees
For breakfast, I scramble eggs and drink white milk. I speak only to myself and dream of soft lips on my cheek. I become a freak on my own terms, my icy breath reminiscent of Mississippi snow days, hooked to the back of the Land Cruiser, a “redneck sleigh.” This way it’s easier, growing older, forgetting then remembering then forgetting. When I remember the world has been muted before, the toothpick trees are nothing new. I am nothing new. When I say I become a freak I only mean I’m getting high alone and dreaming of myself like one shouldn’t. Dreaming of what I was thinking about in the back of that canoe, that canoe that rode across the white carpet of snow. All I have is now and even though I’m wrapped up in 5 PM darkness and it feels like the world is ending I am nothing more than a toothpick tree, stripped down.
beautiful, fragrant!!