Oranges
Casey Killingsworth This is all I know about oranges. You hold the frozen can under a hot tap until you can squeeze out the concentrated juice and then add water, like my mother did every day of my childhood. Most of the time you forget about the juicy sweet oranges barely contained under sun-ripened skins that come in a box from her parents, once a year, to remind her of a warm California childhood. You watch her eat her orange slowly, after yours is long gone, and wonder what memory is she reliving today. You don’t know because she doesn’t talk much about her childhood, but you know it must have been a good one, the way she holds on to that orange. You never hear her complain about moving to Oregon, where no orange has ever grown, but she relies upon your father to inform everyone of how lucky they are to have escaped that hell-hole, south California. |
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About the Author: Casey Killingsworth’s poems have been accepted in Kimera, Timberline Review, COG, and other journals. He has a book of poems, A Handbook for Water, (Cranberry Press, 1995) as well as a book on the poetry of Langston Hughes, The Black and Blue Collar Blues (VDM, 2008). He graduated from Reed College.