---

 

Get Cara Losier Chanoine’s writing in the FREE PDF file 2013 poetry chapbook How a Bullet Behaves				You can also order this as a 2013 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book How a Bullet Behaves

Sour Grapes

Cara Losier Chanoine

When I was three years old,
I choked on a grape.
I was surprised, but to be fair,
I did try to swallow it whole.

The culprit was the texture.
I couldn’t stand the way that grapes burst
between my baby teeth,
like overfilled water balloons,
the thin strips of skin intermingling
with the pale, watery entrails.

My mother was a registered nurse,
but her first reaction was still
to lift me by my ankles with one hand
while bringing down the other against my lungs
in frenzied, wide-palmed thumps.
The pressure of my blood made me feel like
an uncorked bottle of champagne,
but then the grape slipped free.
It rolled out off my tongue as though
I were an oyster giving up a pearl.

Afterwards, I refused to eat grapes
unless they were peeled.
When no one volunteered
to do this for me,
I peeled them with my fingernails;
small, painstaking strips.
Eventually, I gave them up altogether.
I felt deceived by how easily their rubbery resilience
could be crushed.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...