To mow the lawn – his only chore – he propped open
his bedroom window with his stereo speakers, set the arm
so the vinyl would repeat and turned the volume
louder than the sputter of gas chewing overgrown New Jersey
grass. When Meatloaf screamed about a “Bat out of Hell,”
the whole neighborhood knew my brother’s allowance
was being withheld or he was about to get the belt. My sister
and I used the clippers to trim the curbed edges even though
we also dusted, vacuumed, cooked and did the dishes,
complaining about unfair divisions of labor one week
to the “Dark Side of the Moon,” the next to “The Grand
Illusion” or “Born to Run.” We were never allowed to choose
the tunes. My sister grew up to go to Springsteen concerts
with him; I was the one who would truly run from the Northeast,
first to the daily warmth and minty evening breath of Southern
California, then to Miami, moist mouth of the world, where
grass doesn’t grow under the mango trees that throw so much
shade there isn’t enough sun for such small blades, and where
my brother never came to visit, preferring the green he grew
in Greenwich and on Wall Street. After he died, his son found
a job in South Florida and came to live with us for a time, learning
the names and provenance of this fruit, how to tell the differences
between a Carrie and a Beverly, between the mango that is not yet
ready to be picked and the one that will be cast down
to the driveway overnight if left too long, and how to eat a freshly
caught Haden over the garbage can or sink to save his suit.
He volunteered to gather them, bringing in armloads like firewood,
wandering around the patchy lawn as if it were a bocce court,
one ear tuned to the buried beat of the tropics, the other still turned
inward, an antennae vibrating with the silence his father left behind.
Jen Karetnick is the author of three full-length books of poetry, including American Sentencing (Winter Goose Publishing, 2016) and The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, 2016), as well as four poetry chapbooks. She is the winner of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize. She works as the creative writing director for Miami Arts Charter School and as a freelance dining critic, lifestyle journalist, and cookbook author.