perhappened mag
issue 11: HOMECOMING
why i buy my corn
in the freezer aisle
ISAAC PICKELL
what i used to love about corn on the cob is the satisfying control
eating it up, bursting little rows in sequence like a typewriter—
there’s so much other stuff just outside the reach of memory
i wish i could recall where it got left at. back there. to a child
even the cold can be a hero because it leaves
with the morning but keeps promises, returning every night
to the people used to waiting their turn. like the deep-blue
grandfather i never knew from the sea, a resounding voice
i never heard who’s hiding in the unkempt canopy of a shade
tree, the kind that was planted after all the others were
cut down, all of them & all of us & all our children cut down
to size so someone could choose where to put new ones right
where they offered the most shade & a good place to hang.
this whole country was built on the back of nothing so much
as vague certainty like maybe someday this’ll be the land
where people chase their dreams. but you don’t need to
squint through cold sunrise glare or cold twilight gloom to see
how silly that seems. we’re not at the gears of anything, let alone
ourselves. there’s always someone else manning the switch,
holding the skewer. so now my cobs feel messy, like plunging
both hands blindly into earth, reaching & risking hazards like dirty &
unknown. what i want is trimmed & cleaned, shaved off pieces of
roots like you find in a dead kin’s closet or wrench from under one of them
saplings planted in the thawed ground their last spring, just a promise of a tree
before it’s cut down before it’s pieces before it’s a box at the end of too long
a procession full of laughter & the grin reward for lived life. for staying alive:
look out for the ones who keep laughing through yellow teeth & a jukebox
kept loose through patience and a fist and hear their exhale: why brace against
the rising wind heard first fast coming through whisper trees, or the shadow
breaking across a field in a steady line, racing to where you stand immutable
& natural as its coming: that’s just the cold; breathe open, it’s almost home.
eating it up, bursting little rows in sequence like a typewriter—
there’s so much other stuff just outside the reach of memory
i wish i could recall where it got left at. back there. to a child
even the cold can be a hero because it leaves
with the morning but keeps promises, returning every night
to the people used to waiting their turn. like the deep-blue
grandfather i never knew from the sea, a resounding voice
i never heard who’s hiding in the unkempt canopy of a shade
tree, the kind that was planted after all the others were
cut down, all of them & all of us & all our children cut down
to size so someone could choose where to put new ones right
where they offered the most shade & a good place to hang.
this whole country was built on the back of nothing so much
as vague certainty like maybe someday this’ll be the land
where people chase their dreams. but you don’t need to
squint through cold sunrise glare or cold twilight gloom to see
how silly that seems. we’re not at the gears of anything, let alone
ourselves. there’s always someone else manning the switch,
holding the skewer. so now my cobs feel messy, like plunging
both hands blindly into earth, reaching & risking hazards like dirty &
unknown. what i want is trimmed & cleaned, shaved off pieces of
roots like you find in a dead kin’s closet or wrench from under one of them
saplings planted in the thawed ground their last spring, just a promise of a tree
before it’s cut down before it’s pieces before it’s a box at the end of too long
a procession full of laughter & the grin reward for lived life. for staying alive:
look out for the ones who keep laughing through yellow teeth & a jukebox
kept loose through patience and a fist and hear their exhale: why brace against
the rising wind heard first fast coming through whisper trees, or the shadow
breaking across a field in a steady line, racing to where you stand immutable
& natural as its coming: that’s just the cold; breathe open, it’s almost home.
Isaac Pickell is a passing poet & PhD student at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he studies the borderlands of blackness and black literature. His work is most recently featured in Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Fence, and Sixth Finch, and his chapbook “everything saved will be last” is out this year from Black Lawrence Press.