“Cantaloupe” by Jacqueline Knirnschild

Cantaloupe

At the brick old-fashioned grocery store in Mississippi
I buy a cantaloupe and ask the cashier, can you cut this for me?
He says he’s too busy, hands me a knife and board.

So, I lob the top off like the coconut man I visited years ago
in the open-air, umbrella filled Ghanaian market,
the man who wore a t-shirt that read I look better naked
in purple and pink cartoon letters that bubbled
like the suds in the bucket he probably used to wash
the dust from the thin, sun-bleached cotton—
scrubbing the powder detergent that comes from a plastic
baggie scrunched on the ground, mouth open to the red clay
and soap, swirling like soft serve, rubbing into our clothes
and bodies that absorb the antibacterial
agent that sneaks into our rivers, veins,
lakes of sanitizer sloshing in our bellies
along with the syrupy seeds that I scoop and sling
like my mom and I used to do on Halloween in Ohio—
submerging our fingers in the guts
and carving out pieces of pumpkin, wobbling
like the thin mozzarella pizza I ate in Italy
when I was sixteen with my host sister—tomato sauce drip-
ping on the plate, our hesitant words, and a dribble of amber beer
like the drops of mango juice on the table in Ghana,
where I returned, to that blue house in Dodowa,
where Auntie Bea sculpted a mango for me—the heart shedding
sticky onto the page, connecting everyone.

Now, here I sit in the Water Valley City Park.
Flies squat on my chunks of melting melon
and for once, I don’t swat, I welcome them to the feast.

JACQUELINE KNIRNSCHILD

Jacqueline Knirnschild is originally from northeast Ohio, but currently, she is traveling the world. Right now, she is in Melbourne, Australia, and her next destination is Vietnam. She holds a BA in English from the University of Mississippi, and her poetry has been published in Poetry South, Full House Literary, and Product Magazine. She also has essays and literary criticism published in Ninth Letter, Full Stop, and The Cleveland Review of Books and journalism published in Hakai, Number: Inc, Burnaway, and The Key Reporter. You can find her on Twitter @JacqKnirn

Headshot: Mark Dolan

Photo Credit: Staff