Fruit Dispute

I had my first fruit dispute today.

It was just after 9. I was on my way back from my Wednesday evening voice class, when I decided the Whole Foods Market at California and Franklin was due to receive my feedback. They closed at 10, and even from the bridge I was confident I could make it.

Minutes later, I marched into the produce section, sides barrelled, and one fist raised waist high. "There's mold in all the fruit!" I snarled with intensity. It was an intensity wrapped in the poignant memory of raspberries fed to the trash, as I watched dolefully with an empty belly. Just hours after those very raspberries, organic as they may be, were sold to me by the rascals I was about to upturn.

"Whole Foods says mold is organic!," this time I ended with a little hiss, as if I was saying "organiss". I don't know why that happened.

By this point, I'd gotten the attention of only one customer, a slight older lady in long maroon gown, with a purse as large as her handbasket, and nothing of interest in either one I'd have assumed. But I had no claim with her - in fact I was slightly embarrased because of her presence there - nonetheless, I had work to do.

I approached aisle 6. "You there, mold merchant," I hooted in my best Charlton Heston. A 40-something hispanic man with a neatly trimmed mustache, and skin a shade very close to my own turned his head as his hands continued to scan irregular chunks of hard cheese.

"I demand justice!" I soared. The man behind the conveyor belt, who I was now able to identify as "Rolfo" had a momentary eye exchange with the brunette working aisle 5. It appears they were just going to wait for security to show.

I needed traction. Suddenly, without an instant of decision magazines were flying in every direction. Yoga Today, San Francisco Magazine, 12 copies airborne. Vegan Monthly, Eco News, splayed like drunk ballerinas in every direction. "Ha ha," I yielded.

It was only as the second guard hyperextended my shoulder that my vengeance began to abate. The automatic doors were barely closed behind me as I felt the evacuated stillness of defeat. Damn those raspberries. Damn that mold.

Today not tomorrow

Jai Hind.

Bajan

Stemware martini
Attacks stemware wine
Pens take note

Coffee beans rain down
Through bolts of glass
As tablas thunder

Dha Ga Dhi Ga Dha
Ta Ka Ti Ka Ta
Dha Ga Dhi Ga Dha Te Te Te Te Te Te Te Te

Shirtless skin boasts
Invincibly
Unconvinced it was him

Silver coil throbs
Against its broken spiral

Safety cowers in a stained wood box
With a bag of green cardamom
Some books
And a tape

Dha Ga Dhi Ga Dha
Ta Ka Ti Ka Ta

And a minefield moves into the womb

Dha Ga Dhi Ga Dha Ka Te Te Ka Te Te Ka Ta