The International Writers Magazine: Making a Splash

Fruit for the Gods • Michael Chacko Daniels Fuyu, I sink teeth into and eat skin and all. Hachiya, I gulp.

After I send the haiku out, word comes back: “Michael, you sound like an upstart crow. This is America. Go for plain English. Just say ‘persimmon.’ Those other words? Ugh! Do you know Chinese or Japanese? No. So . . .”

So, I go to our friendly farmers’ market in the heart of San Francisco, our Best of the West city.
It’s a Wednesday in November and a wild, westerly wind has swept away the cardboard signs.

What are those? I test a farmer-vendor, pointing to soft, heart-shaped, orange-colored fruit.

Hachiya, he slices into the wind.

And then I point to the other wooden crate filled with the firm, round variety.

Fuyu, he blows into the wind.

In San Francisco—home to Japantown, Chinatown, and Little Saigon, and some of the largest Filipino, Korean, and Southeast Asian populations in the United States—I boast: West is also East. And this is best.

In California, transplanted home of many of the world’s fruits, some people love fuyu, others hachiya, just as when they were first carried in some wandering hakim’s golden sack along the ancient Silk Road.

I, like some people, love one and then the other.

But, as for the winged denizens of my little kitchen . . .

Ignoring fuyu

fruit flies dart to the large bag

filled with hachiya

© Michael Chacko Daniels September
San Francisco, 2010
mchackod@pacbell.net

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Chacko Daniels is a former community worker and clown who grew up in Bombay, India. His past adventures include five years as a Volunteer In Service To America, four as editor/publisher of the New River Free Press of Grand Rapids, MI, and 16 running the Jobs for Homeless Consortium. He lives and works in San Francisco. His writing has appeared in Apollo's Lyre, Cricket Online Review, Denver Syntax, dragonfire, Eclectica, Grey Sparrow Journal, Hackwriters, Popular Ink, Quicksilver, SHALLA Magazine, and The Battered Suitcase. Writers Workshop, Calcutta, has published three of his books: Split in Two (Poetry, 2004), Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (Novel, 2004), and That Damn Romantic Fool (Novel, 2005). Website: http://indiawritingstation.com/

No Dancing on the Bus
MCD

More life moments