I Suck at Poetry: the Pomegranate Edition

Yesterday was National Poetry Day, and today was National Coffee Day. I was caught in a deadline deluge yesterday, so I could not produce any half-assed free verse within the span of the fake holiday. However, tonight, liquored up on that addictive substance known as the Starbuck's seasonal coffee (tonight's weapon of choice: the maple pecan latte), I scribbled out a few lines inspired by a memory of an afternoon in Armenia, a million years ago, eating a difficult fruit for the first time. 

I have no idea why this tiny memory came back to me. I was walking upstairs to my apartment, and, BOOM, I was on a side street in Yerevan a lifetime away from now. After I scribbled down a few lines, I thought about what the pomegranate means in Armenia — good fortune, fertility, hope. An old tradition in Western Armenia sees brides throwing and breaking a pomegranate, scattering the seeds to ensure the birth of healthy children.

Without meaning to, I think I wrote something about people other than myself and my friend eating sweet seeds for the first time. I think I wrote about people longing for something they do not have.

But hey, it's just broken lines of bad verse. It can mean anything you want.

Granat

It was cold in in Yerevan

that day when you bought

a pomegranate for us

to share.

You cut it open

with a pocket knife

splitting the dull rind

exposing the richness inside.

Purple-red beads

heavy with juice.

I plucked one out

and placed it on my tongue

crushing it against my teeth.

“Looks like caviar,” you said

turning an aril between

thumb and forefinger.

Sweet caviar.

Plump

and sweet

and glistening.

“It means good fortune here.

Fertility,” I said.

We sat on a swingset

in an empty playground

eating gems from a shell.

Fingers stained and wet

no napkins in my pocket

to sop the harvest blood.

I held my hands out before me

the color of garnets

drying in the breeze.